Thursday 22 September 2022

Al-Idrīsī’s twelfth-century description and map of Lincolnshire

The following short piece was originally published in the Lincoln Record Society News Review, 18 (2021), pp. 2–4; the version presented below is the fully-referenced version of this text.

The aim of the following note is to direct attention to an often-overlooked Arabic account and map of Lincolnshire found in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī khtirāq al-āfāq, ‘The book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands’, of the Muslim scholar al-Idrīsī, composed c. 1154 for Roger II of Sicily.(1)

The North Sea and the east coast of England on al-Idrīsī’s mid-twelfth-century Arabic map, from a mid-thirteenth- to early fourteenth-century copy. Note, north is at the top and south at the bottom; the river running across the centre of the image is the Witham with Boston on the left and Lincoln on the right, whilst Grimsby is shown on the coast to the north of the river (Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Arabe 2221, f. 338v–339r; Public Domain)

Al-Idrīsī was a descendant of the eleventh-century Ḥammūdid dynasty of Málaga in al-Andalus (Spain), a distant branch of the Idrīsid family that ruled Morocco from the late eighth to late tenth centuries, and his Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī khtirāq al-āfāq is one of the great geographical works of the medieval period.(2)  Preserved in ten manuscripts dating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, this work was written in Sicily for Roger II (1112–54) and gathered together a vast array of information on the various regions of the world known to its author and was illustrated by a series of 70 maps. As part of this, al-Idrīsī included a brief description of eastern England that runs as follows:

Herein is the second section of the seventh climate, containing a portion of the Ocean wherein lies the island of lnqlṭrh [England, l’Angleterre]… From the town of ǧrnmūdh [Yarmouth, Gernemutha/Gernemuda] to the town of nrġīq [Norwich, Norwic] is ninety miles. The town of Norwich is distant ten miles from the sea, and from there to aġryms [Grimsby] is a hundred and fifty miles by sea. From the said town of Yarmouth the sea[-coast] curves round in a circle, but still tending northwards. From the said town of Grimsby to the town of afrwīk [York, Evrvic] is eighty miles. The latter lies at a distance from the Ocean, and on the border of the peninsula of sqwsyh [Scotia], which is contiguous with the island of England… From the town of York to the estuary of the river of bskh [Boston] is a hundred and forty miles, and Boston is a fortress (ḥiṣn) situated on this river twelve miles upstream from the sea. From the aforementioned of Grimsby to the town of nqwls [Lincoln, Nicolas] inland is a hundred miles; the river flows through the midst of it and flows out of it towards the town of Grimsby, but flows into the sea on the south of the latter, as we have mentioned before. From the inland Lincoln to the town of York is moreover ninety miles, and from thence to the town of dūnālma [Durham, Dunelme] eighty miles northwards.(3)

Al-Idrīsī was by no means the first author of an Arabic text to discuss and describe this island, as I have discussed elsewhere, but he was the first to name it Inqalṭāra, England (Angleterre), rather than Britain and the first to leave us a description of places in Lincolnshire.(4) In terms of his knowledge of this area, which has been considered to derive either from one or more informants or even from a visit to England by al-Idrīsī himself,(5) we can highlight several points of interest.

First, Lincoln appears as Nqwls,(6) reflecting the French name for the city, Nicole, that is recorded from early twelfth century through to the late fourteenth and which shows the Anglo-Norman interchange of n/l arising from dissimilation.(7) Lincoln is described in the text as being located on both sides of the River Witham, something that accurately reflects the twelfth-century situation with the old walled city to the north and the medieval suburb of Wigford to the south, and this is replicated on al-Idrīsī’s accompanying map of England, where Lincoln is the only city depicted straddling a river (see Fig. 1). Al-Idrīsī’s claim that this river both flows into the sea to the south of Grimsby and ‘flows through the midst of it [Lincoln] and flows out of it towards the town of Grimsby’ is similarly of interest. This has been described as ‘a major error’ and a result of confusion, but this need not be the case.(8) Rather, it could again reflect a degree of genuine knowledge of the Lincoln region in the first half of the twelfth century, as Lincoln and Grimsby were indeed connected by inland waterways in the twelfth century, with one being able to travel by boat from the Witham at Lincoln north-westwards along the Foss Dyke and then down the Trent and the Humber through to Grimsby after 1121, when the Foss Dyke was renovated and made navigable again by Henry I.(9) That al-Idrīsī (or his informant) was indeed aware of this route is confirmed by his statement that ‘from the inland Lincoln to the town of York is moreover ninety miles’, something that is certainly not true via road or sea, but is almost exactly true if one travelled to York by boat via the Foss Dyke, the Trent and then the Ouse.(10)

Second, Boston appears as Bskh/Bska(11) and is shown situated just inland of the sea and located on the same river as Lincoln on al-Idrīsī’s map of the east coast (Fig. 1). Interestingly, Boston is described as a ḥiṣn, a ‘fortress, stronghold, entrenchment’,(12) in contrast to Lincoln and Grimsby, which are each described as a madīna, a ‘town, city’.(13) The reason for this description is open to question, but it is worth noting that the Barditch around the town is thought to date from the eleventh–twelfth centuries and has been interpreted in the past as a ‘defensive ditch’; needless to say, al-Idrīsī’s comment may well add further weight to this interpretation.(14)

Third and finally, it seems clear from both al-Idrīsī’s text and his map that the area from Yarmouth to York, including Lincolnshire, was the part of the east coast of England in which he was most interested. There is, for example, nothing depicted or mentioned to the south of Yarmouth until one reaches the mouth of the Thames and, moreover, little evidence for any knowledge of any sites north of the Humber aside from Durham (which is wrongly mapped on the western side of England, not the east), with the northern bank of the Humber being omitted entirely so that York is consequently placed on the coast and close to the border with Scotland. Similarly, it is noteworthy that the only river depicted between the Thames and Scotland is the Witham. Quite why the Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī khtirāq al-āfāq was particularly interested in this area of England is unclear, but we might tentatively wonder whether Lincolnshire’s well-known role in the medieval wool trade from the pre-Conquest period onwards might not have somehow motivated this interest.(15) Certainly, the early fourteenth-century Taqwīm al-buldān, ‘Survey of the countries’ (1321), of Abū l-Fidāʾ, which makes explicit use of a thirteenth-century Arabic description of England by Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī (1213–86), praises the quality of English wool, noting that in England ‘is made the fine scarlet cloth from the wool of their sheep, which is fine like silk’.(16) The fame of English wool and the regard in which it was held in medieval Europe is well-known, but this reference and two further ones in the early fourteenth century from Rashīd al-Dīn and Banākatī to ‘exceedingly fine scarlet cloth’(17) from England imply that the renown of English wool products reached well beyond Europe and the Mediterranean in the medieval period.

'Plan of Boston, England', by Thomas Moule, 1837, slightly cropped, showing the Barditch around the town (Source: The Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library; licensed for reuse under a Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) licence via Flickr).

Footnotes

1. The only reference to it by a modern Lincolnshire historian that I am aware of is in Stephen H. Rigby’s Boston, 1086 –1225: A Medieval Boom Town (Lincoln, 2017), pp. 8, 19, 61, who encountered it via an earlier version of this paper posted on my academic blog at <https://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/03/al-idrisi-twelfth-century-map.html>.

2. For al-Idrīsī, see J.-C. Ducène, a'l-Idrīsī, Abū ʿAbdallāh', in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, ed. K. Fleet, G. Krämer, D. Matringe, J. Nawas, and E. Rowson (Leiden, 2018), consulted online on 25 February 2021 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_32372>.

3. A. F. L. Beeston, 'Idrisi’s Account of the British Isles', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 13.2 (1950), 265–80 at pp. 278, 279–80, with minor modifications; note, I have included the transliterated Arabic names as read, discussed and identified by Beeston, pp. 273, 275–7. Grimsby is mentioned by name in the previous section by al-Idrīsī, although without any further details, see Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires Publié par la Société de Géographie: Géographie d’Édrisi, ed. P. A. Jaubert (Paris, 1840), vol. 2, p. 374.

4. On the name of England in Arabic works, see also D. G. König, Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2015), pp. 277–8. For an earlier Arabic text that mentions Britain and gives more than just names, see C. Green, 'Britain, the Byzantine Empire, and the concept of an Anglo-Saxon ‘Heptarchy’: Hārūn ibn Yaḥyā’s ninth-century Arabic description of Britain', in Global Perspectives on Early Medieval England, ed. K. L. Jolly and B. Brooks (Woodbridge, 2022), pp. 94–114. See also D. N. Dunlop, 'The British Isles according to medieval Arabic authors', Islamic Quarterly 4 (1957), 11–28.

5. For the latter suggestion, see C. Loveluck, Northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c. AD 600–1150: A Comparative Archaeology (Cambridge, 2013), p. 323, who accepts that al-Idrīsī ‘had visited England prior to his arrival in Sicily in c. 1138’; for the former, see Beeston, 'Idrisi’s Account', p. 280.

6. Beeston, 'Idrisi’s Account', pp. 269, 277.

7. K. Cameron, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part One, The Place-Names of the County of the City of Lincoln (Nottingham, 1982), pp. 2–3, and see, for example, A Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Lincoln (Lincoln, 1848), pp. 23–4.

8. M. Ferrar, 'Al-Idrisi; The Book of Roger The description of L’Angleterre', Cartography Unchained, website, December 2020, consulted online on 25 February 2021 <https://www.cartographyunchained.com/pdfs/cgid1.pdf>, p. 10.

9. F. M. Stenton, 'The road system of medieval England', Economic History Review, 7 (1936), 1–21 at p. 20; M. J. Jones, D. Stocker and A. Vince, The City by the Pool: Assessing the Archaeology of the City of Lincoln (Oxford, 2003), pp. 116, 241; Simeon of Durham, Historia Regum, s.a. 1121: ‘In the same year, king Henry cut a large canal from Torksey to Lincoln and by causing the river Trent to flow into it, he made it navigable for vessels’, trans. J. Stevenson, Simeon of Durham: A History of the Kings of England (Felinfach, 1987), p. 188.

10. Interestingly, the distance given from Grimsby to Lincoln is approximately correct too, in this case if one sailed down the east coast of Lincolnshire and up the Witham via Boston.

11. See Beeston, 'Idrisi’s Account', p. 277 n. 55 and Arabic text at p. 269, line 55; Géographie d’Édrisi, ed. Jaubert, vol. 2, p. 425. The form here suggests that the name encountered may have been one in which the town’s name had already been shortened to Boston or similar, rather than the original Botuluestan etc., although according to Victor Watts this form is only recorded in England from 1235: V. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004), p. 71. With further regard to the name as given by al-Idrīsī, it may also be worth noting that Boston was ‘established within lands belonging to Skirbeck’, just to its south, which derives from Old Norse skirr + bekkr, ‘the clear stream’: K. Cameron, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names (Nottingham, 1998), p. 111; N. Grayson, Lincolnshire Extensive Urban Survey: Boston, Historic England/LCC project no. 2897 (Lincoln, 2019), p. 4; Rigby, Boston, pp. 4, 20. The name ‘Boston’ does, of course, appear in a variety of forms on early maps—for example, on the map of England attributed to the Genoese cartographer Pietro Vesconte in Marino Sanudo Torsello’s Liber secretorum fidelium crucis of c. 1321, Boston is Sanbetor whilst the Wash is labelled as the Gulffo de Sanbetor (British Library, Additional 27376 f. 181).

12. H. Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. J. Milton Cowan, 4th edn (Wiesbaden, 1979), p. 214.

13. Wehr, Dictionary, p. 1055.

14. D. M. Owen, 'The beginnings of the port of Boston', in A Prospect of Lincolnshire, ed. N. Field and A. White (Lincoln, 1984), pp. 42–5 at p. 43; Grayson, Boston, p. 5; Rigby, Boston, p. 14.

15. On the early medieval roots of the Lincolnshire wool trade, see for example R. Faith, 'The structure of the market for wool in early medieval Lincolnshire', Economic History Review 65.2 (2012), 674–700. Note, in about 1200 Boston was second only to London in the scale of its overseas trade, with its trading activity being initially largely based around the wool trade, for which it was England’s most important port at that time: Rigby, Boston, pp. 1–2; S. H. Rigby, Boston and Grimsby in the Middle Ages (University of London PhD Thesis, 1982), pp. 175–6, 195–6.

16. Dunlop, 'The British Isles', p. 25; M. Reinaud, Géographie d'Aboulféda, 2 vols (Paris: A L'Imprimerie Nationale, 1848), vol. 2, p. 266.

17. Dunlop, 'The British Isles', p. 26.

The text content of this post and page is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2022, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Friday 19 February 2021

Macamathehou in Lincolnshire and the evidence for people named Muhammad in medieval England

The aim of the following draft is to offer some thoughts on a local name from thirteenth-century Lincolnshire, Macamathehou, that involves a version of the Arabic name Muhammad (Middle English Makomet/Macamethe, Old French Mahomet). Whilst it has been plausibly seen as an instance of a variant of the name of Muhammed being used to mean 'heathen', 'pagan idol' or similar (based on the false but common medieval Christian belief that the prophet Muhammad was worshipped as a god), here in reference to a barrow that was considered to be a pre-Christian site, it is worth noting that there are a small number of people with names and surnames derived from Arabic Muḥammad apparently living in twelfth- to fourteenth-century England.

Figure 1: the location of Macamathehou between Spridlington and Faldingworth parishes in Lincolnshire; click the image or here for a larger version (image: C. R. Green/OpenStreetMap and its contributors). 

The existence of the intriguing local name Macamathehou in the parish of Spridlington, Lincolnshire, was first noted in 2001 by Kenneth Cameron, John Field and John Insley in Place-Names of Lincolnshire VI (PNL), with both attestations of the name dating from the thirteenth century (the reign of King Henry III, 1216–72).(1) They identify the two elements of the name as being Old Norse haugr, 'mound, barrow', and Middle English Makomet/Macamethe, which derives from the name of the prophet Muhammad (Medieval Latin Machometus/Mahumetus, Anglo-Norman Mahumet/Mahomet/Machomete, Old French Mahomet < Arabic Muḥammad, probably via an Arabic regional form Maḥammad).(2) Needless to say, this solution is most intriguing and has, moreover, found favour with other place-name specialist, including the Vocabulary of English Place-Names (VEPN) and Richard Coates.(3)

As to the import of this name, the easiest conclusion—and the one endorsed by PNL, VEPN and Coates—is that the first element, Macamethe/Maumate etc, is not functioning simply as a normal Middle English rendering of the name Muhammad/Mahomet, but rather as a word indicative of heathen or pagan idolatry, based on the false but common medieval Christian belief that the prophet Muhammad was worshipped as a god. So, PNL describes the name as meaning 'the heathen mound', with the first element being 'a corrupt ME [Middle English] form of the name of the prophet Mohammed, for which v. MED [Middle English Dictionary], s.v. Makomete, also used to denote a pagan god or an idol'.(4) This is taken up by Richard Coates, who says that it has been suggested, 'with great plausibility', that Macamathehou in Spridlington parish 'is a Middle English name meaning "Mahomet mound", i.e. "heathen mound"', and points to 'the repeated compound of OE hæðen + byrgels "heathen burial"' as a potential comparison.(5) Likewise, the VEPN's draft section on M includes the following discussion:

makomet ME, 'idol, pagan god', an application of the name of the Arab prophet Mohammed (commonly though mistakenly believed by medieval Christians to have been worshipped as a god)... It occurs early in Macamathehou (f.n.) 1216–72 L:6·211 (haugr), presumably to be interpreted as 'heathen mound'.(6)

On the whole, this interpretation is probably the safest option. There are certainly a handful of references to 'heathen' barrows in Old English charter bounds, for example of leofwynne mearce to þam hæþenan beorge, 'from Leofwine's boundary to the heathen barrow', in the charter S956 relating to Drayton, Hampshire, and dated AD 1019, although none are recorded from Lincolnshire.(7) It has also been suggested that the Lincolnshire names Bloater Hill (North Willingham) and Blod Hou (Barrow-on-Humber) derive from Old Norse blóthaugr, 'a sacrificial mound', whilst other names involving haugr certainly refer to supernatural/demonic creatures—for example, Gasthehowe/Gastehowe, Ashby Puerorum (Lincolnshire), recorded in the thirteenth century and deriving from Middle English gast/Old English gāst, 'ghost, dead-spirit', or names like Scratters (Scrathou, in Hayton, East Riding of Yorkshire) and Scrathowes (Scrathou, in Osmotherley, North Riding of Yorkshire), which derive from Old Norse skratti, 'devil, wizard' + haugr.(8) Furthermore, the Old English compound hæðen + byrgels, 'heathen burial', does indeed recur frequently in Late Saxon charter bounds, with these names often said to be identifiable with barrows in the landscape.(9)

On the other hand, there are some possible issues with this explanation, and other interpretations are possible of Spridlington's Macamathehou. First, the comparison with the many instances of the OE compound hæðen + byrgels, ‘heathen burial’, is perhaps not as convincing as it might seem. Not only is a link between this term and barrows only demonstrable in a handful of instances, but Andrew Reynolds has also suggested that the sense of the term was primarily not ‘pagan’, but rather ‘unconsecrated’, and that it denoted burials of executed offenders and other social outcasts, which renders the proposed value of these names as support for interpreting Macamathehou  as meaning ‘heathen mound’ open to significant debate.(10) Second, if the above is correct, then this would be the only known instance of a derivative of the Arabic name Muhammad being used in a place-name to indicate a 'heathen mound' or similar, which is potentially concerning—the other elements noted above all recur in multiple names. Third, the element identified by PNL and VEPN as being present in Macamethehou is Middle English Makomet(e). The Middle English Dictionary (MED) on Makomet(e)/Macamethe etc, however, makes it clear that the primary use of this word in Middle English is as a form of the name Muhammad, not as a word referring to an 'idol'/'pagan god', with the vast majority of quotations provided by the MED referring either the prophet Muhammad or people named Muhammad; the only exceptions are a single quotation from Layamon's Brut (c. 1200, mahimet, lacking the -c-), and three from two later texts.(11) The form of the name Muhammad that was primarily—although not exclusively—used in the sense 'pagan deity, idol', is rather Maumet/Maumate, mentioned above, deriving from Anglo-Norman Maumet, a reduced form of Mauhoumet, Old French Mahomet/Mahommet.(12)

In this light, it is worth considering whether it is possible that the name Macamathehou could somehow be named from a person named Makomet/Muhammad or similar living in medieval England. Certainly, it should be noted that multiple local names relating to mounds/barrows do seem to be named after people who owned estates or land in the area. For example, Andrew Reynolds draws attention to the bounds of a mid-tenth-century charter for Swallowcliffe, Wiltshire (S468), that records the burial site of a seventh‐century woman whose grave had been cut into an existing mound as Posses hlaew, noting that 'Poss is a male name, and thus the mound is apparently not named after its Anglo‐Saxon occupant', implying that it was instead named after a later estate owner.(13) As Irene Bower long ago pointed out, such a situation can be credibly paralleled in Lincolnshire, with a number of Lincolnshire names involving haugr seeming to contain the same personal-name as is found in the same or a neighbouring parish-name—so, Scalehau (Skalli + haugr) was located near to Scawby (Skalli + ), with Kenneth Cameron commenting that the two were 'no doubt named from the same man'; Leggeshou (Leggr + haugr) was located on the boundary of Legsby parish (Leggr + ); Katehou/Catehowe (Kati + haugr) was located in South Cadeby (Kati + ); and a Grimaldeshawe (Grimaldi + haugr) was recorded in the neighbouring parish to Grimoldby (Grimaldi + ), perhaps on the boundary between the two.(14)

Figure 2: Section from the Pipe Roll Society publication of The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Seventh Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D. 1160–1161 (London: Wyman & Sons, 1885), p. 10, dealing with Mahumet of Wiltshire (image: Internet Archive).

As to the likelihood of someone named Muhammad or one of its Anglo-Norman/Middle English variants (Mahumet, Makomet and similar) actually living in medieval England, this is perhaps less far-fetched than might be assumed. Katharine Keats-Rohan and John Moore have directed attention to the Wiltshire entries of five consecutive Pipe Rolls of Henry II (1160/61–1164/65) that refer to a man named Mahumet, whose name-form Moore considers very difficult to explain as anything other than a rendering of Muhammad and which is accepted as such by the OED and MED. This Mahumet is recorded in the Pipe Rolls only because he was fined for his part in an unlicensed duel with a John de Merleberge, probably in or near Marlborough Castle, and it seems he was not an especially wealthy man, as he was pardoned the last mark of his fine due to his poverty.(15) Furthermore, Mahumet of Wiltshire was not the only man with this name for whom we have evidence from medieval England. For example, a Theobald filius Mahumet (or filius Mahomet) is recorded from early thirteenth-century Hampshire in the Pipe Rolls of Henry III for 1222–24; another man named Mahomet is recorded in 1327, when Edward III issued him and six others a pardon at Newton-on-Ouse, Yorkshire, for 'offenses in Ireland'; and a Mahummet Saraceno occurs in the Close Rolls of Henry III for 1254. Furthermore, a number of people surnamed Mahumet and similar are recorded in documents of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example a Humphrey Mahumet in a charter of Southwick Priory, Hampshire, a Herbert Maumet who was sergeant of Portsmouth in the mid-thirteenth century, and a Radulphus Maumet who is recorded in the reign of King John.(16) Moore also notes the presence of someone bearing another 'apparent Arab name' in twelfth-century Hampshire, a certain Paucamatus, a name that he considers to probably reflect Bakmat, who is recorded in Winchester from 1159/60 until 1183/4 and who is associated with a man named Stephanus Sarracenus, one or both of whom may be of some relevance here.(17)

Looking more generally at the question of the presence of people who were Muslims or of potential Muslim ancestry in medieval England, and so who might bear names like Mahumet/Makomet and similar, Richard of Devizes in his description of London from c. 1192 certainly implies that there were 'Moors' in that city then, when he writes that:

You will arrive in London... do not mingle with the throngs in the eating-houses; avoid dice and gambling, the theatre and the tavern. You will encounter more braggarts than in the whole of France. The number of parasites is infinite. Actors, jesters, smooth-skinned lads, Moors, flatterers... All this sort of people fill all the houses.(18)

We do need to be careful here, however. The word translated ‘Moors’ here is actually garamantes, which may indicate an origin for this section in a classical or literary source, rather than reality, especially as influence from Horace’s Satires has been identified in the subsequent sections of Richard’s description of London.(19) More certainly relevant may be recent archaeological excavations at the medieval cemetery of St John’s Hospital, Lichfield, which revealed the burials of between two and five people of African ancestry, some of apparently high status, and at Ipswich, where nine people out of a total of a total of 150 excavated from a cemetery there appear to be of 'sub-Saharan' African descent, spread across thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, with the earliest having oxygen isotope results consistent with an early life spent in North Africa/Tunisia.(20) Likewise, recent work on burials in a mid-fourteenth-century cemetery at East Smithfield, London, indicated that 29% of a sample of 41 people buried there were of ‘non-White European ancestry’.(21

In the above light, it may also be worth noting that both Henry II and his son Richard I seem to have had 'Saracen mercenaries' in their employ, the latter having as many as 120 such mercenaries and apparently including at least some of them in the garrison of Domfront, Normandy.(22) Similarly, it is intriguing to note that knowledge of the location of medieval Lincoln on either side of the River Witham and the existence of the Foss Dyke as a waterway between that city and the River Trent seems to have reached the great Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi, who included these facts in his geographical encyclopaedia Nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq, written for Roger II of Sicily and completed in 1154—indeed, it has been suggested that al-Idrisi probably travelled to England himself during the first half of the twelfth century, which is a point of some significance.(23)

Figure 3: Al-Idrisi's mid-twelfth-century Arabic map of Britain, from a late sixteenth-century copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the map is split across three different drawings which have been combined together here so that the whole island can be seen (Bodleian Library MS. Pococke 375 folios 281b-282a, 308b, 310b-311a)—click the image or here for a larger view. Lincolnshire is on the left hand side, as the map is orientated with north at the bottom; the river flowing nearly horizontally from the left to right is the Witham, with Boston near the sea and Lincoln upstream, where the river flows through the town, just as it did in the medieval period when it divided the old Lower City from its medieval southern suburbs (image: Bodleian Library)

Finally, attention might also be directed to the evidence for at least some 'Saracens' having been unwillingly brought into England in the medieval period, although this is perhaps less directly relevant to the current enquiry. So, the Flores Historiarum under the year 1271 makes reference to Thomas de Clare having returned to England from the Holy Land with 'four Saracen prisoners',(24) and the Calendar of Patent Rolls for 1259 includes a mandate for the arrest of a runaway 'Ethiopian... sometime a Saracen' who had apparently escaped his master:

Mandate to all persons to arrest an Ethiopian of the name of Bartholomew, sometime a Saracen, slave (servus) of Roger de Lyntin, whom the said Roger brought with him to England; the said Ethiopian having run away from his said lord, who has sent an esquire of his to look for him: and they are to deliver him to the said esquire to the use of the said Roger.(25)

In sum, whilst we can point to no specific man named Mahumet/Makomet/Macamathe/Maumet (< Muhammad) present in twelfth-/thirteenth-century Lincolnshire after whom Macamathehou in Spridlington might be named, it seems clear that it is not entirely impossible that someone bearing such a personal name or something similar could lie behind this mound-/barrow-name, rather than it simply being a folkloric name intended to convey the meaning 'heathen barrow' or similar. Although such a usage of the name Muhammad might parallel names such as Scrathou and Gastehowe and be reflected in the usage of the medieval form Maumet and similar to mean 'pagan deity' or 'idol' in Middle English, there is significantly less evidence for the form Makomet being used in this way. Furthermore, not only are there no other instances of Makomet or Maumet being used in local names to indicate a perceived 'heathen' or 'pagan' character for landscape features such as mounds and barrows, but there is evidence for at least some people named variants of Muhammad living in medieval England between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries. Additionally, there is also a small amount of textual evidence for Muslims and people of potential Muslim origins being present in England and Normandy in this era, some being clearly captured or enslaved, but others potentially living in cities such as London, Ipswich and Lichfield, and some even perhaps being relatively high-status or in the employ of the king. Such people were probably not present in England in great numbers, but the evidence we have for this is not insignificant, and it may at least give us further pause for thought when considering just what the meaning of Macamathehou might be. 

Footnotes

1.     K. Cameron, J. Field & J. Insley, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Six, The Wapentakes of Manley and Aslacoe, Survey of English Place-Names LXXVII (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 2001), p. 211; the name appears as both Macamathehou, which they treat as primary, and Mornmatehou.
2.     Cameron, Field and Insley, Place-Names of Lincolnshire VI, p. 211; Oxford English Dictionary, 'Mahomet, n.', OED Online, third edition, Oxford University Press, September 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/112410, accessed 10 November 2020; 'Makomet(e), n.', in S. M. Kuhn & Reidy (eds), Middle English Dictionary: Part M.1 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1975), p. 83. On haugr, see M. Gelling & A. Cole, The Landscape of Place-Names (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), p. 174.
3.     R. Coates, 'Azure Mouse, Bloater Hill, Goose Puddings, and One Land called the Cow: continuity and conundrums in Lincolnshire minor names', Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 39 (2007), 73–143 at p. 85; VEPN, The Vocabulary of English Place-Names: M, draft version, online edition at www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/ins/documents/vocabulary-of-english-place-names-m-draft.pdf, accessed 10 November 2020, p. 14.
4.     Cameron, Field and Insley, Place-Names of Lincolnshire VI, p. 211.
5.     Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', p. 85.
6.     VEPN, The Vocabulary of English Place-Names: M, draft version, p. 14.
7.     A. Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 274.
8.     Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', p. 85; K. Cameron, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Two, The Wapentake of Yarborough, Survey of English Place-Names LXIV/LXV (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 1991), p. 24—note, a similar name, Blodhowfeld/Blodhowgate, also occurs in Thurmaston parish, Leicestershire. On gastehowe/gasthehowe, see I. M. Bower, The Place-Names of Lindsey (North Lincolnshire) (University of Leeds PhD Thesis, 1940), pp. xviii, 200; for Scratters and Scrathowes, see, for example, A. H. Smith, English Place-Name Elements, Survey of English Place-Names XXVI (Cambridge: English Place-Name Society, 1956), Part 2, p. 126.
9.     Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs, pp. 274–7.
10.     Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs, pp. 219–22.
11.     Middle English Dictionary, 'Makomet(e, n.', in Robert E. Lewis, et al. (eds), Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952–2001), online edition in F. McSparran et al. (eds), Middle English Compendium (Ann Arbor, 2000–18), quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED26593, accessed 10 November 2020.
12.     Middle English Dictionary, 'Maumet, n.', in Robert E. Lewis, et al. (eds), Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952–2001), online edition in F. McSparran et al. (eds), Middle English Compendium (Ann Arbor, 2000–18), quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED27106, accessed 10 November 2020. For the use of Maumet and similar as a surname, see below and MED sense 2(d).
13.     Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs, pp. 203–04.
14.     Bower, Place-Names of Lindsey, pp. xviii, 253–4; K. Cameron, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 1998), pp. 26, 80, 107. See also Hawardeshou, the meeting-place of Haverstoe Wapentake, which was almost certainly a barrow in Hawerby (Hawardebi) parish, both names involving the Scandinavian personal name Hāwarth, and Calnodeshou, the meeting-place of Candleshoe Wapentake, which was probably on Candlesby Hill, named from Candlesby, Calnodesbi: Cameron, Dictionary, pp. 27–8, 61. Likewise, the meeting-place of the wapentake of Wraggoe was presumably a Wraghehou (Wraggi + haugr), which may well have been at Wragohill in Wragby (Wraggi + ): Bowers, Place-Names of Lindsey, p. 250; Cameron, Dictionary, pp. 143–4.
15.     K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, 'Queries', Prosopon, 9 (1998), p. 6; J. S. Moore, 'Who was "Mahumet"? Arabs in Angevin England', Prosopon, 11 (2000), pp. 1–7; D. Thornton, K. Keats-Rohan & R. Wood, 'Mahumet', COEL Database: Continental Origins of English Landholders, 1066-1166, [data collection], UK Data Service SN: 5687, doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-5687-1; OED third edition, 'Mahomet, n.'; Middle English Dictionary, 'Makomet(e, n.'. See The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Seventh Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D. 1160–1161, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society IV (London: Wyman & Sons, 1885), p. 10; The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Eighth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D. 1161–1162, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society V (London: Wyman & Sons, 1885), p. 13; The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Ninth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D. 1162–1163, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society VI (London: Wyman & Sons, 1886), p. 46; The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Tenth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D. 1163–1164, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society VII (London: Wyman & Sons, 1886), p. 14; and The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Eleventh Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D. 1164–1165, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society VIII (London: Wyman & Sons, 1887), p. 57.
16.     K. S. B. Keats-Rohan in Moore, 'Who was "Mahumet"?', pp. 6–7; The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Sixth Year of the Reign of King Henry III, Michaelmas 1222 (London: Pipe Roll Society, 1999), p. 96, and The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Eighth Year of the Reign of King Henry III, Michaelmas 1224 (London: Pipe Roll Society, 2005), p. 12; Calendar of Patent Rolls: Edward III, A.D. 1327–1330 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1891), p. 123; Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III: A.D. 1253–1254 (London: HMSO, 1929), p. 211; K. A. Hanna (ed.), The Cartularies of Southwick Priory: Part 1 (Winchester: Hampshire County Council, 1988), pp. 16–17, and K. A. Hanna (ed.), The Cartularies of Southwick Priory: Part 2 (Winchester: Hampshire County Council, 1989); Middle English Dictionary, 'Maumet, n.', sense 2(d), as surname, and Rotuli de oblatis et finibus in Turri Londinensi asservati, tempore Regis Johannis, ed. T. D. Hardy (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1845), p. 455.
17.     Moore, 'Who was "Mahumet"?', p. 3.
18.     Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, ed. and trans. J. T. Appleby (London, 1963), pp. 65–6, with modifications by W. Johansson, 'London's Medieval Sodomites', in History of Homosexuality in Europe and America, ed. W. R. Dynes & S. Donaldson (New York and London: Garland, 1992), pp. 159–63.
19.     J. Scattergood, ‘London and money: Chaucer’s Complaint to his Purse’, in Chaucer and the City, ed. A. Butterfield (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 162–76 at pp. 171–2.
20.     Ipswich: BBC, History Cold Case: Series 1, Episode 1—Ipswich Man (broadcast 27 July 2010); 'Skeleton of medieval African found in Ipswich sheds new light on Britain's ethnic history', BBC Press Office, 2 February 2010, online at www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/05_may/02/history.shtml, accessed 18 November 2020; K. Wade, Ipswich Archive Summaries: Franciscan Way, IAS 5003 (Ipswich: Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, 2014), pp. 9, 10, 12, online at archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/ipswich_5003_2015/downloads.cfm; and Xanthé Mallett, pers. comm.. Lichfield: C. Coutts, 'St John’s Hospital, Lichfield: a Black and White Medieval Cemetery', talk at the Market Hall Museum, Warwick, on 24 July 2017, online abstract at www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/listings/region/west-midlands/st-johns-hospital-lichfield-black-white-medieval-cemetery/, accessed 18 November 2020; Jasmine Kilburn, pers. comm..
21.     R. Redfern and J. T. Hefner, ‘“Officially absent but actually present”: bioarchaeological evidence for population diversity in London during the Black Death, AD 1348–50’, in Bioarchaeology of Marginalized People, ed. M. L. Mant and A. J. Holland (London: Academic Press, 2019), pp. 69–114.
22.     Moore, 'Who was "Mahumet"?', p. 1; F. M. Powicke, 'The Saracen mercenaries of Richard I', Scottish Historical Review, 8 (1911), 104–05.
23.     C. R. Green, 'Al-Idrisi's twelfth-century map and description of eastern England', blog post, 28 March 2016, online at www.caitlingreen.org/2016/03/al-idrisi-twelfth-century-map.html, accessed 18 November 2020; A. F. L. Beeston, 'Idrisi's Account of the British Isles', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 13.2 (1950), 265–80 at pp. 278, 279–80; C. Loveluck, Northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c. AD 600–1150: A Comparative Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 323 ('Al-Idrisi... had visited England prior to his arrival in Sicily in c. 1138')
24.     C. D. Yonge (trans.), The Flowers of History (London: Bohn, 1853), vol. 2, p. 453.
25.     Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry III: Volume 5, 1258–1266, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte (London: HMSO, 1910), p. 28, and see further M. Ray, 'A Black Slave on the run in Thirteenth-Century England', Nottingham Medieval Studies, 51 (2007), 111–9. Note, ‘Ethiopian’ here probably means simply someone of ‘Black African ancestry’, rather than someone from modern Ethiopia, given Late Antique and medieval uses of this term.

The text content of this post and page is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2020, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Thursday 11 February 2021

The 'bluestones' and Bluestone Heath of eastern Lincolnshire: some thoughts on their significance and name

The following brief note is concerned with the so-called 'bluestones' and the 'Bluestone Heath Road' of eastern Lincolnshire. In origin, the stones themselves seem usually to be glacial erratics—non-local boulders carried here from northern Britain by the ice-sheets—that were used as focal points for their communities, for example functioning as meeting-stones, court-stones, judicial stones, or boundary markers, although earlier antiquarians suggested that some had more sinister roots. The following piece discusses the history and use of some of the more notable examples of 'bluestones' in eastern Lincolnshire, including the 'Louth Stone' and 'Haveloks Stone', as well as some examples further afield, before briefly considering the potential etymology and meaning of 'bluestone' in this context. Finally, a list of the various recorded Lincolnshire bluestones is given, with further details of both these stones and the evidence for the Blue Stone Heath in the central Lincolnshire Wolds. 

The Louth Stone or Bluestone/Blewstone, first mentioned in 1503 and weighing four to five tons. Now located outside Louth Museum, in all of the early references it was situated at the junction of Mercer Row and Upgate in the centre of town, although some unwarranted nineteenth-century antiquarian speculation that it was originally located in the Julian Bower maze outside of the town has found its way on to the museum's plaque describing it.

The term 'bluestone' or 'blue stone' is used for a number of apparently notable boulders found in eastern Lincolnshire, as well as occurring in the name of the important prehistoric ridgeway across the Lincolnshire Wolds now known as the 'Bluestone Heath Road'. The latter name is absent from Kenneth Cameron's 1998 volume A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names, despite other major Lincolnshire road-names appearing there, and isn't considered in Victor Watts' Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names or other national surveys like that of Ekwall and Mills, although it appears on relatively large-scale maps like the OS 1:50,000 Landranger.(1) The road-name was noted by G. S. Streatfeild, who observed that 'no-one is able to explain the Blue Stone' in this name and suggested that it was perhaps a corruption of the medieval road-name Buskhowstrete for the same route, a position reiterated by Arthur Owen. On the other hand, Irene Bower in her 1940 doctoral thesis on The Place-Names of Lindsey offers the brief and arguably more credible opinion that the name is not a corruption of Buskhowstrete, but rather an independent name that 'refers to the blue stones in the north east of Lindsey', perhaps because a notable example of one of these was once found on the Wolds here, a conclusion also supported by C. W. Phillips.(2) Certainly, the term 'bluestone' or 'blue stone' for specific, important stones recurs repeatedly in eastern Lincolnshire from at least the first half of the seventeenth century, and there moreover seems to be evidence for the separate existence of a Blueſtone Heath or Blue Stone Heath in the Wolds north of Belchford and to the west of the Louth, which would support 'Bluestone Heath Road' being a genuine name instead of a corruption. Thus a reference to Blueſtone Heath occurs in the Journals of the House of Commons for 1770, another is found in Pride and Luckombe's The Traveller's Companion of 1789, and an area of the Wolds is labelled Blue Stone Heath on Captain Andrew Armstrong's 1779 Map of Lincolnshire, although this name for the central Wolds doesn't seem to survive in active use beyond the first half of the nineteenth century aside from in the road-name.(3) So, the question must become, what exactly was a Lincolnshire 'blue stone'?

With regard to the question of quite what a 'blue stone' was in a Lincolnshire context, the specific examples that we know of all seem to have been large boulders and glacial erratics (glacially-deposited rocks that differ in size and type from the rock native to the area in which they rest) used as boundary and meeting-stones in eastern Lincolnshire. The 'Louth Stone', for example, is also known as the 'blewstone' at least as early as 1651, and seems to have functioned as a meeting- and judicial stone for the town located in the centre of Louth at the junction of Mercer Row and Upgate since at least 1503—so, for example, the Warden of Louth was paid 6d for the examination of Jews 'at Blew stone' in 1745, and it is also claimed to have been 'a sanctuary for murders and other criminals'.(4) Likewise, there were two major boundary-stones each known as 'the blew stone' at Grimsby by the seventeenth century, one being located on the coast between Grimsby and Cleethorpes (where it is shown on the 1819 OS draft map and the subsequent First Series) and the other being the famous Havelocks Stone, which was described by Gervase Holles in 1634 as a great blue stone functioning as a 'Boundry-Stone lying at ye East-ende of Briggow-gate'.(5

The Blue Stone Heath, as marked on Captain Armstrong's Map of Lincolnshire, 1779; the interesting circle to its north is probably Belchford Wood, with a close examination of the marks revealing them to be trees (image: British Library).

Another important 'blue stone' was found in Humberston parish, located just to the south of Cleethorpes, whose name was first recorded in the eleventh century and means 'the stone by the River Humber', with Gervase Holles in 1634 identifying the 'Humberstone' as being 'a great Boundry blew Stone just at the place where Humber looseth himselfe in ye German Ocean'.(6) Ethel Rudkin similarly drew attention to another important 'blue stone' at North Thoresby, which is referred to as follows in White's 1856 Directory of Lincolnshire
In a field near the church, called Bound croft, is a blue stone, over which the manor court was formerly held.(7)

Ethel Rudkin noted of this in 1934 that 'the Stone lies in a field immediately north of the Church, in a depression, with banks round it' and that the Sexton at North Thoresby recalled there being a Court Day when he was lad.(8) Furthermore, in 1935 she published extracts of a mid-nineteenth-century manuscript history of Lincolnshire by John Smith of Caistor that included a tale that linked this blue stone and another at the Deserted Medieval Village of Audby/Autby in North Thoresby parish with the medieval Lincolnshire story of Havelok and Grim, the supposed founder of Grimsby (interestingly, both stones in Grimsby have been associated with figures from this too). According to Smith, he was told by locals twenty years previously that these two blue stones were magical, the one at Thoresby having the ability to control the rain and the one at Audby having the ability 'to make the corn grow', and together they caused there to be 'plenty in the land'. John Smith then went on record that he was told by the 'rustics' of Audby that:

Ivery year for a long while after the folks cam' fra far an' wide to a grand feast about the stanes, an' they were whipt till iverybody went wicked wi' prosperity. Then the Devil come an' flew away wi' Grim's stane [the Audby stone].(9

John Smith further commented that the North Thoresby stone, known as 'Boundel's stone',
is a large blue stone standing near the centre of an old enclosure at the north end of the village, I was met with the ready tradition that owing to its ancient votaries having made a practice of planting their rods of hazel and wych-elm in the soil around, after the ceremony of basting, a grove had grown up for its protection; hazel and wych-elm it appears offering very potent charms against necromancy...
     It is traditionally stated that in old time whenever the Manorial Court was held here the steward, jurymen and tenants of the Manor used to march in procession, each bearing a white hazel wand (peeled rods of ash, willow, or hazel) from the Manor House at Audeby through the village to Boundel's Croft, and there surrounding the stone, used to perform an ancient ceremony in connexion with all transfers of land.(10)
The stone itself is, incidentally, probably the stone referred to in the North Thoresby street Stanholme Lane, recorded as Stayneholme in 1451–53, that surrounds the relevant field to the north of the church, suggesting that the stone's local importance may stretch back to the late medieval era and likely before, whilst an unlocated twelfth- to fourteenth-century Hotie or Hortye in North Thoresby, meaning 'public meeting-place at a muddy site', may well have applied to this site too.(11) Finally, other 'blue stones' were found in the Lincolnshire Wolds village of West Ravendale, where a Blueston feild is documented in 1630 but not after, and at Immingham to the north of Grimsby, which gave its name to Bluestone Lane and the Bluestone Inn, with a large glacial erratic erected by the Inn in the early 1960s that is said to have been 'taken from a field at the top of the Lane'.(12)

Detail of Edward Metcalf's 1819 draft map of Grimsby for the Ordnance Survey, showing the location of the Blue Stone on the coast between Grimsby and Clee (image: British Library).

This is all most intriguing. Of course, it is worth pointing out that the term 'bluestone'/'blue stone' for large, significant boulders is not solely restricted to eastern Lincolnshire, although it does seem to be exceptionally prevalent here. The volumes of The Survey of English Place-Names include a small handful of other examples, namely two instances from Cheshire (a 'Bluestone' glacial erratic at Acton and another called 'the Blewe Stonne at Blacon' that functioned as a boundary-stone), one from Norfolk (Cawston parish, surviving in a number of names, for example Bluestone Hall), and one in County Durham (a 'Blue Stone Carr' recorded in the nineteenth century at Bishop Middleton).(13) In addition, there was a stone known as 'The Great Blue Stone' that functioned as the market stone at Scarborough, being 'where public bargains were ratified and discharged, it being the custom in those days'; a 'blew Stone about the middle of the Bridge' at Newcastle that marked 'the bounds of Newcastle Southwards' and from which the Mayor pronounced the banishment of the Society of Friends from Newcastle in 1657–8; a 'Blew-Stone' on the boundary between the demesne of Manchester and the township of Reddish' that was first mentioned in 1322; and a handful of 'blue stones' in Scotland too, such as the Devil's Blue Stane at Crail, Fife.(14) It would be remiss not to also mention here perhaps the most famous insular 'bluestones', those non-local stones—transported ultimately from Wales—known by this name at Stonehenge, which were first recorded as 'blue stones' in 1812 according to the OED. With regard to these bluestones, it is worth noting that the name Stonehenge seems to derive from Old English stān + hengen, arguably meaning 'stone gallows', suggesting that the site may have had some (at least imagined) judicial function in the past, something potentially supported by the discovery of a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon decapitation burial there.(15) Finally, it is important to observe that the name 'Bluestone' (Blauwe SteenBlaue Stein, Blåstein and similar) also occur for a number of important stones used as boundary-stones, judicial-stones, court-stones or even execution-stones outside of Britain too, particularly in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Flanders (northern Belgium), and parts of Germany, with examples in Flanders additionally being often associated with prehistoric burial mounds.(16

So, what does the term 'bluestone' mean? The simplest solution would obviously be that these locally important stones all just so happened to be bluish in colour and hence were each, independently, named 'the blue stone' or similar, purely as the result of a rather notable coincidence. The problem with this, however, is that not all of the 'bluestones' actually seem to be particularly 'bluish' in colour. Richard Coates, referring to those in the Grimsby area, has noted that 'the colour blue seems irrelevant to the instances known to me', and something similar is apparently true for many of the 'bluestones' recorded in Germany too.(17) Indeed, Grimsby's 'the blew stone in Welowgate', also known as Havelocks Stone, is reportedly actually a boulder of pinkish granite, whilst images of the Immingham, Scarborough and Crail stones, for example, don't suggest stones that might be thought of as being primarily blue in colour. Such a description might just about fit the dark-coloured Louth Stone, at least with the eye of faith, though it should be noted that the 'Blue Stone' at Louth was clearly not considered particularly blue by the folk of the town, as at one point it was actually painted blue to match its name!(18) Likewise, it was said in 1930 of the North Thoresby example that 'the stone is not blue', and English Heritage notes of the famous Stonehenge 'bluestones' that not only are they made from a variety of types of stone, but they also do 'not appear blue' under normal circumstances, although they are somewhat tenuously said to have a 'bluish tint' when freshly broken or wet.(19

So, if these important 'bluestones' that were used as meeting-stones, judicial-stones, market-stones, and boundary-stones were not all blue, or obviously blue, then why were they all called this? The implication of the above would seem to be that 'bluestone' is here functioning not as a simple descriptive name, but rather as some sort a technical/functional term, but what might this be? Thus far, only one theory has been suggested for the English examples, which has been outlined by Richard Coates, the current President of the English Place-Name Society, as follows:
The origin of the term bluestone has not been ascertained, but the colour blue seems irrelevant to the instances known to me. There is no strong formal reason why the first element should not be Sc. *blōð ‘blood’ or even *blōt ‘sacrifice’. In either case, Sc. *stein- has presumably been replaced by its English counterpart. It is *stein- that appears in the earliest attestations of Stanholme in North Thoresby.(20)
Bloater Hill, North Willingham, whose name may derive from Old Norse blóthaugr, 'a sacrificial mound' (image © Chris/Geograph, CC-BY-SA 2.0).

Needless to say, this alternative theory is certainly an interesting idea. In terms of the local context, it is worth noting that a small number of other names involving Scandinavian blōt, 'sacrifice, heathen activities', have been identified in Lincolnshire. One is Blod hou, recorded in the thirteenth century in Barrow-upon-Humber parish, which Kenneth Cameron and John Insley derive from Old Norse blóthaugr, 'a sacrificial mound'.(21) Another is Bloater Hill in North Willingham parish, Bloatoe Hill in 1606 and bloto in 1697, which Cameron leaves unexplained but Coates considers to be identical in meaning to Blod hou and to likewise derive from Old Norse blóthaugr, 'a sacrificial mound', something that may also apply to Blodhow in Thurmaston parish in neighbouring Leicestershire. A final example may be Blotryngcarre in Scartho parish, Grimsby, which could, just possibly, also involve blōt, although other explanations are possible.(22

Of course, whilst all of this does suggest that the element blōt was indeed used in Anglo-Scandinavian Lincolnshire, it also highlights an issue with deriving the local names 'bluestone' and 'Bluestone Heath' from blōt, namely the lack of any instances with similar formed first elements amongst the various bluestones/blewstones, which should urge caution here. Similarly, the implied interpretation of these stones that the above etymology would involve is perhaps uncomfortably close to early antiquarian explanations of them—for example, the 'blew-stone' at Louth was suggested by Robert Bayley in 1834 to have been 'a Druid stone, which was used perhaps on Julian Bower for an altar'.(23) On the other hand, some of the English and the Continental examples do seem to have functioned as judicial- or even execution-stones, which is suggestive, and Coates's etymology is certainly intriguing and would help explain the use of 'bluestone' for such a limited group of important and not-always-blue stones. In this light, it may also be worth noting that it has been independently argued that the Blåstein, 'Bluestone', near the famous ninth-century Gokstad ship-burial at Sandar, Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway, was originally a blotstein, 'sacrifice stone', so the shift from this name to 'bluestone' in England would not be without potential parallels elsewhere.(24)

The site of the ninth-century Gokstad ship-burial at Sandar, Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway (left of the map, marked by an antiquity symbol) and the nearby Blåstein (right of map); click for a larger view (image: OpenStreetMap).

A list of Lincolnshire bluestones and bluestone names
1.     The Blue Stone Heath & Bluestone Heath Road
The Blue Stone Heath or Blueſtone Heath occurs from at least 1770, when it appears in the Journals of the House of Commons in reference to the new Turnpike to be constructed from Louth in that year, suggesting that it was an already well-established term for part of the central Lincolnshire Wolds by that date. The 'Blue Stone Heath' is also labelled on Captain Andrew Armstrong's Map of Lincolnshire of 1776-9, John Cary's A New Map of Lincolnshire of 1801, and George Bellas Greenlough's A Physical and Geological Map of England and Wales (1820, 2nd edn. 1839), in all cases to the north of Belchford, and C. W. Phillips in 1933 noted that 'the Blue Stone Heath was the upland tract between Belchford and Cadwell'. It appears subsequently in the name 'Bluestone Heath Road', which doesn't seem to be recorded before the nineteenth century, but occurs both on Edward Metcalf's 1819 draft map for the Ordnance Survey and in Thomas Allen's 1834 History of the County of Lincoln as an accepted name for the road north and east of Scamblesby and Belchford known in the medieval period as Buskhowstrete. Phillips suggests, reasonably, that this tract of upland 'may have carried a well-known glacial erratic' or 'blue stone', going on to say that 'many of these "blue stones" are found in the Wold country. The most famous is at Louth... The stone which presumably gave its name to the Heath is gone.'(25)

The Bluestone Heath, as marked on Greenlough's A Physical and Geological Map of England and Wales, 1839 (image: David Rumsey).
2.     The 'blew-stone' at Louth, aka the Louth Stone
The first reference to the 'blew-stone' at Louth occurs on 24 July 1503, when land lying in the town of Louth at Louth Stone (ad louth stone) is mentioned; subsequent references to the hous leyng agayn Louth stone or Lowth Stone occur in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and indicate that one the 'great houses' of Louth lay by it, and by the seventeenth century this house was known as the blew-stone House. In 1651, this was occupied by a Mr Walpole, who subsequently bought it in 1677 for £150, and in 1728 the Blue Stone Inn was sold by John Walpole to an innkeeper called Robert Shaw. This inn was reputed to be the largest in Lincolnshire, occupying the whole of the westernmost medieval burgage tenement fronting on to Mercer Row where it joined Upgate and running all the way back to Kidgate, and references to Blue Stone/Louth Stone itself confirm that it too stood here in the centre of town at the junction of Upgate and Mercer Row up until 1827, when the owner of the former Blue Stone Inn, a printer named Benjamin Fotherby, moved it into his yard. It has subsequently been moved to the front of Louth Museum on Broadbank. It should be noted that, although the plaque above the stone on the museum wall claims that the stone was originally located in the medieval Julian Bower maze on the top of the southern hill above the town, there is absolutely no evidence for this. The idea began in 1834 as speculation on the part of a local antiquarian author and minister, Robert Bayley, who hypothesised that the stone was
a Druid stone, which was used perhaps on Julian Bower for an altar... (26)
but offered no support for this flight of fancy. Indeed, all the evidence we have suggests that, from its first recording, the Blue Stone/Louth Stone was located in the centre of town at the junction of the main commercial street, Mercer Row (the 'principal street' of Louth, according to John Britton in 1807), and the main north–south routeway through the town, Upgate. As to its use, it seems to have functioned at least in part as a judicial stone, as in 1745 when the Warden of Louth was paid 6d. for 'Jews Examined' there in that year, whilst other references suggest an at least occasional use as a market-stone, with items being pledged for sale there (cf. the Scarborough 'Great Blue Stone'). It is also claimed to have been 'a sanctuary for murders and other criminals'.(27)
3.     Havelocks Stone, or 'the blew stone in Welowgate'
This 'blew stone' seems to be first mentioned under the name havelokeston in 1521, with its description as a blew stone/blewstone being first recorded in the seventeenth century. In 1634, Gervase Holles describes this as a 'Boundry-Stone lying at ye East-ende Of Briggow-gate' that 'retaines ye name of Havelocks Stone to this day', Havelok being the hero of the medieval Lincolnshire poem Havelok the Dane and a key personage in the foundation-story of Grimsby. George Oliver in 1825 also writes of this stone as follows:
An ancient monument, still in existence, offers a further testimony to corroborate the story of Gryme and Haveloc. A large stone, composed of imperishable materials, said to have been brought by the Danes, out of their own country, forms the landmark which separates the parish of Grimsby from the adjoining hamlet of Wellow; and is know at this day by the significant appellation of Haveloc's Stone.(28
According to Anderson Bates in his Gossip About Old Grimsby of 1893, the stone was 'placed in the road opposite the end of the passage to the house No. 8, Wellowgate, and what remains of it may now be seen near the kerbstone, so that part of the house was in Wellow, and part in Grimsby'. Bates further records both Oliver's tale that the stone was brought over by the Danes and an alternative tale that it was once part of the church, but had been thrown down from there by Grim (the founder of the town) when he was attempting to stop a hostile fleet!(29) The stone was reportedly moved to Welholme Galleries at some point after this and is said to be a boulder of pinkish granite found there.(30)
4.     Grimsby's blew stone on the coast by the old Race Ground
This boundary-stone seems to be first recorded in the seventeenth century as the blew stone or ye blewstone and was located on the coast between Grimsby and Clee. Although it has been suggested that the stone was first placed on the coast in 1824, it is shown there on Edward Metcalf's 1819 draft map of Grimsby for the Ordnance Survey. The Freemen of Grimsby and the Cleethorpes Commoners apparently contested the exact boundary on the coast here and the associated rights of grazing on 69 acres of Common, with the boundary being only definitively fixed on the blue stone after a trial at the Lincoln Assizes in 1830; it was presumably decided that the blue stone was indeed the ancient boundary marker, contrary to the claims of the Grimsby men.(31) Certainly, this was the interpretation in Cleethorpes. In C. Ernest Watson's A History of Clee and the Thorpes of Clee, published in 1901, it is noted that the 'famous "Blue Stone"' was 
a relic of the time when the Mayor and Corporation of Grimsby "whipped the boundaries." Tradition, however, could not control the rapacity of the Grimbarians, who claimed that their Marsh extended as far as the Old Haven. The Meggies [a local name for the inhabitants of Cleethorpes] pinned their faith upon the Blue Stone, and the Kirton Quarter Sessions of 1828 pronounced in their favour. The town was not going to be brow-beaten by the village, verdict or no verdict; Grimsby turned its cattle to graze between the Blue Stone and the Old Haven. Cleethorpes promptly impounded them. Grimsby sent out a hundred stalwarts armed with bludgeons to assault the pound and rescue the cattle. Cleethorpes charged them with pound-breach, and nine of the enemy went to prison. Grimsby thereupon adopted the Meggy plan of campaign and impounded all Cleethorpes cattle found on the North of the Old Haven. Cleethorpes again invoked the law, and at the Lincoln Assizes of 1830 the matter was finally settled in their favour. (32)
The location of the coastal Blue Stone on the common land that was used for racing; the Blue stone is shown to lie approximately on the inland boundary of Grimsby as it extends along the coast to the Racing Ground, but the courts in 1828 and 1830 agreed with the men of Cleethorpes that the ancient boundary of Grimsby only went up to this stone, not beyond as depicted on this Grimsby map from the first half of the nineteenth century (photo: C. R. Green; the map is an older map included in Anderson Bates' A Gossip of Old Grimsby, 1893).
5.     The Humberstone
The name of Humberston parish, first recorded in Domesday Book, means 'the stone by the River Humber'; in 1634 Gervase Holles identified the 'Humberstone' as being 'a great Boundry blew Stone just at the place where Humber looseth himselfe in ye German Ocean', as noted above.
6 & 7.     The blue stones at North Thoresby and Audby
The North Thoresby stone, located in a field immediately to the north of the church, seems to be first recorded as a 'blue stone' in the early nineteenth century, but the field-name Stayneholme, recorded in 1451–53 and surviving as 'Stanholme Lane' running around the field to the north of the church, suggests that it was certainly in place by that date at the latest. Ethel Rudkin and others have chronicled a number of fascinating tales and superstitions surrounding the North Thoresby stone and an apparent now-lost twin at the DMV of Audby, which are given at length above. The stone seems to have functioned as a meeting-place and court-site, as well as being credited with some sort of role in ensuring rain. Further details of local traditions about the site are given by Walter Johnson, who recorded the following in 1908:
An old lady, born in 1819, told me that in her childhood the village fair of North Thoresby (Lincs.) was held near the church, in a field which had a large blue stone in the middle. Around this stone games were played. Villagers born a little later, say 1830–40, could tell nothing of the custom... the jury of the manorial courts formerly met at this stone, within 'an old enclosure'...(33
The stone itself was described as 'not blue' in 1930, despite its name, and since then has either been removed or buried (it has been recently claimed that the stone has been rediscovered and is sunk into the field so that only the top is visible); the Audby stone is mentioned in stories, but was said in these to have been taken away by the Devil.(34) Excavations in the 1960s in the relevant field to the north of the church found a large rubbish pit with finds dated from the the late fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, and noted that the Bluestone here was also 'called the Moot Stone locally'.(35) Interestingly, twelfth- to fourteenth-century documents also record an unlocated Hotie or Hortye in North Thoresby parish, which probably means 'public meeting-place at a muddy site' and may well have applied to this site too.

The site of the Blue Stone at North Thoresby to the north of St Helen's Church; note the street-name Stanholme Lane, aka 'the gate [road] that comes from Stainholme' (1664), around the field in question, which preserves the fifteenth-century name Stayneholme, probably referring to the meeting-stone in this field. The third side of the field is marked by 'Bond Croft Drain', which matches the later-recorded name for this field, 'Boundel's Croft' (image: imagery © 2021 CNES/Airbus, Getmapping plc, Infoterra Ltd & Bluesky, Maxar Technologies; map data © 2021 Google. Click here for a larger, zoomable version). 
8.     The West Ravendale Blueston
Blueston feild is documented in West Ravendale parish in 1630, but isn't mentioned subsequently.
9.     The Immingham Bluestone
There was presumably a Bluestone at Immingham to the north of Grimsby, which gave its name to Bluestone Lane and the Bluestone Inn. The latter road-name is first recorded in the early twentieth century, but the road at least was in existence before this, being present on the 1819 draft OS map of the area, when it seems to be uninhabited; the Bluestone Inn is said to have been erected in 1961, when a large glacial erratic was erected outside it (the current 'Bluestone') that is said to have been taken from further up Bluestone Lane. A local commentator on a Head Heritage named Lizzyp1972 contributed the following reminiscence in 2019:
My grandmother lived at 7 Bluestone Lane from the 1930s to the 1990s and my mother from when she was born in 1930s to marrying my dad in the late 1960s. I spent every summer of my childhood there. The stone is a glacial erratic and no-one knew for sure where it came from. It was originally further up Bluestone Lane, about half way up on the right hand side going towards the church. In this location it was laid on its side and kids used to play on it, sliding down it. It was a well known meeting place in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. It may have been taken from a field at the top of the Lane and placed there... When the Bluestone pub was built in 1961 it was moved to the corner of Habrough Road and Bluestone Lane and set on a plinth in its current upright position. The locals did not want it to be moved and there was a belief that moving it would bring bad luck, but as far as my mum can remember nothing bad happened after it was moved. Bluestone Lane has always been called that, even before any houses were built there and it was just a lane through the fields leading to the church (the first houses, including no.7, were built in the 1920s) and the bluestone has always been there, hence the name of the Lane.(36)

10. The 'blue coggul' at Risby 

According to the Lincolnshire antiquarian Edward Peacock, of Bottesford Manor, Brigg, a fifteenth-century document contains a reference to a Blue Stone in Risby parish: 'one of the boundaries of the parish of Risby—a village near here—is spoken of as marked by "an blue coggul."' It is worth noting that the 'blew coggul' is recorded as an alternative name for the Blue Stone at Louth by Gilbert John Monson-Fitzjohn in 1926.(37)

Footnotes

1.     K. Cameron, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names (Nottingham, 1998); V. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004); E. Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th edn (Oxford, 1960).
2.     G. S. Streatfeild, Lincolnshire and the Danes (London, 1884), p. 168 n. 1; A. E. B. Owen, 'Roads and Romans in south-east Lindsey' in A. R. Rumble & A. D. Mills (eds), Names, Places and People (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1997), pp. 254–68 at pp. 258–9; I. M. Bowers, Place-Names of Lindsey (University of Leeds PhD thesis, 1940), pp. 16–7; C. W. Phillips, 'The present state of archaeology in Lincolnshire: part 1', Archaeological Journal, 90 (1933), 106–49 at p. 148.
3.     Journals of the House of Commons, 10 May 1768–25 September 1770, reprinted 1803, p. 814, referring to the widening and repairing of a road 'from the Head of the ſaid Canal, to Blueſtone Heath' (the canal being here Louth's new canal and Riverhead); T. Pride and P. Luckombe, The Traveller's Companion (London, 1789), p. 120; and A. Armstrong, Map of Lincolnshire, published 20 January 1779, British Library Maps K.Top.19.19.5 tab.end. The 'Blue Stone Heath' is also labelled on George Bellas Greenlough's A Physical and Geological Map of England and Wales, first published in 1820, second edition 1839, available to consult online; Phillips, 'Present state of archaeology', p. 148, notes that 'the Blue Stone Heath was the upland tract between Belchford and Cadwell'. 
4.     C. Green, Streets of Louth (Louth, 2014), pp. 258–9; R. W. Goulding, Louth Old Corporation Records (Louth, 1891), pp. 43, 146, 185; G. J. Monson-Fitzjohn, Quaint Signs of Olde Inns (London, 1926), p. 34.
5.     K. Cameron, Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Five, The Wapentake of Bradley (Nottingham, 1997), pp. 20, 51, 58–9; E. B. Metcalf, Draft drawing of the Grimsby area for the Ordnance Survey (1819), British Library OSD 283.24; G. Holles, Lincolnshire Church Notes 1634–42, ed. R. E. G. Cole, Publications of the Lincoln Record Society 1 (Lincoln, 1911), p. 3. 
6.     Cameron, Place-Names of Lincolnshire 5, pp. 116–7; Holles, Lincolnshire Church Notes, p. 14, in a section written in 1634, tentatively supported by Bowers, Place-Names of Lindsey, p. 59.
7.     W. White, History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Lincolnshire (Sheffield, 1856), p. 570.
8.     E. Rudkin, 'Lincolnshire folk-lore: stories about stones', Folklore, 45 (1934), 144–57 at p. 154.
9.     E. Rudkin, 'Traditions attached to large stones at Audby and North Thoresby', Folklore, 46 (1935), 375–6 at p. 376.
10.     Rudkin, 'Traditions attached to large stones', p. 376, and see also K. Gracie, 'The founding legend of Grimsby', in Aspects of Northern Lincolnshire ed. J. Walton (Barnsley, 2002).
11.     K. Cameron, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Four, The Wapentakes of Ludborough and Haverstoe (Nottingham, 1996), pp. 164–5, 170; R. Coates, 'Azure Mouse, Bloater Hill, Goose Puddings, and One Land called the Cow: continuity and conundrums in Lincolnshire minor names', Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 39 (2007), 73–143 at pp. 98–9; A. Pantos, Lincolnshire Assembly Places, unpublished document in the Lincolnshire HER, no. 14 (pp. 7–8). 
12.     Cameron, Place-Names of Lincolnshire 4, p. 154; Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', pp. 98–9; R. Coates, Grimsby and Cleethorpes Place-Names (Nottingham, 2020), p. 28. For the history of Bluestone Lane and the glacial erratic at Immingham, which are both absent from the relevant Place-Names of Lincolnshire volume, see Lizzyp1972's account of the 'Immingham blue stone', online at www.headheritage.co.uk/headtohead/tma/topic/65114/flat/10#826895, dated 2 June 2019.
13.     J. M. Dodgson, The Place-Names of Cheshire: Part Three, The Place-Names of Nantwich Hundred and Eddisbury (Cambridge, 1971), p. 145; J. M. Dodgson, The Place-Names of Cheshire: Part Four, The Place-Names of Broxton Hundred and Wirral Hundred (Cambridge, 1972), p. 170; K. I. Sandred, The Place-Names of Norfolk: Part Two, Three, Hundreds of North and South Erpingham and Holt (Nottingham, 2002), p. 72; V. Watts, The Place-Names of County Durham (Nottingham, 2007), p. 136.
14.     D. White, 'Are you going to Jabbler's Fayre', Scarborough Review, 45 (2017), p. 34; J. Fawcett, A Memorial of the Church of St. Mary's, Scarboro' (London, 1850), p. 45; W. Gray, Chorographia, or, A survey of Newcastle upon Tine (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1649), p. 12; H. T. C., 'Blue Stone', Notes and Queries, 7th series, 1 (1886), 378; J. Westwood & S. Kingshill, The Lore of Scotland: A Guide to Scottish Legends (London, 2009), p. 65.
15.     Oxford English Dictionary, third edition (2013), s.v. bluestone, n., sense 2b; D. Mills, A Dictionary of British Place-Names (Oxford, 2011), p. 438; J. Simpson & S. Roud, A Dictionary of Eglish Folklore (Oxford, 2000), p. 343; M. Pitts et al, 'An Anglo-Saxon decapitation and burial at Stonehenge', Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 95 (2002), 131–46, especially p. 143.
16.     W. Knippenberg, 'De blauwe steen', Brabants Heem, 14 (1962), 26–31; J. Coolen, 'Places of justice and awe: the topography of gibbets and gallows in medieval and early modern north-western and Central Europe', World Archaeology, 45 (2013), 762–79 at p. 766.
17.     Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', p. 99; for German bluestones, see W. Fieber & R. Schmitt, 'Rechtsarchäologische Denkmale in Sachsen-Anhalt: Ein Rück- und Ausblick nach zwanzig Jahren', Signa Iuris, 12 (2013), 27–43.
18.     Gracie, 'Founding legend'; W. F. Rawnsley, Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire (London, 1914), p. 242. Images of Scarborough and Crail stones can be found online here and here. The name of the 'Blue Stone' at Acton, Cheshire, has been explained rather implausibly by recourse to supposed 'blue porphyritic crystals, which are no longer visible', see further the Wikipedia entry on Acton.
19.     T. F. G. Dexter, The Pagan Origin of Fairs (Perranporth, 1930), p. 24. English Heritage, 'Building Stonehenge', online at www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/history-and-stories/building-stonehenge/, accessed 7 February 2020. 
20.     Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', p. 99.
21.     K. Cameron, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Two, The Wapentake of Yarborough (Nottingham, 1991), p. 24.
22.     Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', pp. 77, 85. 
23.     R. S. Bayley, Notitæ Ludæ, or Notices of Louth (Louth, 1834), p. 244.
24.     V. Møller, Sandar: grend og gård 1850-1970, med tidsbilder fra næringsliv og kulturhistorie, vol. 2 (Sandefjord Kommune, 1980), p. 339; J. E. Møller, 'Jordhaugen kan bli mer populær', online article, 12 July 2011, www.sb.no/nyheter/nyheter/jordhaugen-kan-bli-mer-popular/s/2-2.428-1.6651347.
25.     Phillips, 'Present state of archaeology', pp. 148–9.
26.     Bayley, Notitæ Ludæ, p. 244.
27.     G. J. Monson-Fitzjohn, Quaint Signs of Olde Inns (London, 1926), p. 34.
28.     G. Oliver, The Monumental Antiquities of Great Grimsby (Hull, 1825), pp. 14–5.     
29.     A. Bates, A Gossip About Old Grimsby (Grimsby, 1893), pp. 32–3.
30.     Gracie, 'Founding legend'.
31.     Bates, Gossip About Old Grimsby, pp. 11–12; the case was briefly reported as Bellamy vs. Woodliffe and Anderson in the Hull Packet, 23 March 1830, p. 3, and the Stamford Mercury, 12 March 1830, p. 2.
32.     C. Ernest Watson, A History of Clee and the Thorpes of Clee (Grimsby, 1901), pp. 50–1. 
33.     W. Johnson, Folk-Memory or The Continuity of British Archaeology (Oxford, 1908), pp. 143–4; W. Johnson, Byways in British Archaeology (Cambridge, 1912), p. 193.
34.     For the suggestion that the stone has been discovered buried in the field, see Gracie, 'Founding legend'.
35.     Lincolnshire HER record 41205.
36.     Lizzyp1972, 'Immingham bluestone', online at www.headheritage.co.uk/headtohead/tma/topic/65114/flat/10#826895, dated 2 June 2019.
37.     E. Peacock, 'The Blue Stone', Notes and Queries, 7th series, 1 (1886), 294–5 at p. 295; Monson-Fitzjohn, Quaint Signs, p. 34.

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