OF THE PAEISH OF WATFOBI). 197 



The name "Hop Field," in this and other parishes, recalls the 

 time when Hertfordshire, although now no longer a hop-growing 

 county, grow enough hops to supply its local needs. 



Besides tlie village community, the manorial system has left its 

 traces on the place-names. The name of " Black rark," belonging 

 to a field close to Oxhey Place, records the fact that that house, 

 now only a farm, was once the site of an important Manor to which 

 a park was attached as early as the reigu of Edward I. The 

 " Dovehouse Field," close by, is a survival from the time when the 

 privilt'gf of keepiug pigeons was one jealously reserved by the 

 Lord of the Manor to himself. In the long winters, when fresh 

 meat was unobtainable — for all beasts except those required for 

 breeding were killed and salted down — the pigeons formed an 

 important item of food. The name "Tolpits," or " Tolpade " as 

 it was written in the fourteenth century, perhaps indicates the 

 tollpath, or the path by which the tenants went to pay their toll for 

 giinding corn at their lord's watermill, which then stood on the 

 iliver Colne at the place refeiTed to. 



The student of local archaeology and histoiy may also find 

 materials of interest in place-names. In " High- street Farm " we 

 have one of the very few Latin words which the Anglo-Saxon 

 conquerors of this country took over from the Romanized Britons. 

 The roads were a monument of Roman rule which they could not 

 destroy, and so the Latin "stratum" became the Saxon "street." 

 "High-street Farm" seems to mark the line of a branch road 

 which left Akeman Street near Tring, and, running along the high 

 ground parallel to the valley of the Gade, passes through Bovingdon 

 towards Rickmans worth. 



As an instance of the history of later days illustrated in a place- 

 name, we may quote " Edeswick," a seventeenth-century name for 

 Oxhey Lodge, The manor of Oxhey was held in the time of 

 Edward the Confessor by Alwin the Huntsman, "the man of Queen 

 Edith," and it is not too much to suppose that "Edeswick" is 

 a contracted form of " Eddida's Wick." 



The philologist may find some interest in tracing the changes 

 and corruptions of place-names, changes due sometimes to the 

 natural decay of language, sometimes to the endeavour to reduce 

 to writing a word imperfectly heard by the writer As an instance 

 of the former, we may take the progress of the name Cassio, from 

 its earliest form " Caegesho " through " Caysho " to its present 

 form. It may be observed in passing that the histoiy of this 

 name affords an excellent illustration of the saying, " Mythology 

 is a disease of language." The degenerate form " Cassio " is 

 responsible for the story set on foot by the historians of the 

 seventeenth century, that the place took iU name from the British 

 prince Cassivelaunus, who had here his royal palace ! 



Or, again, who would imagine that the nineteenth - century 

 " Twopits " represented the fourteenth - century "Tolpade"? 

 And yet this is the form given to the word by the compilers of 

 the Ordnance map of 1822. Or who Ijut one familiar with the 



