101 



common consisted of 241 acres. Burnley, Burnley Wood, Haber- 

 gham, are as follows : — ^on Saxifield, 309 ; on Roydes, 7 ; Turf 

 Moor, 11 ; Eidge above Burnley, 42 ; Burnley Wood to the bill 

 top, 25; above the Planetree and Huddebill, 561; below the 

 Planetree and Huddhouse to Whittal-lane head, 56 ; the lowest 

 part of Burnley Moor, 93; Meanefield Slacke, 22; Thornhill 

 Moor, 82 ; and Ightenhill-ridge, 46. 



Place Names in Bubnley. 



As you go out of Bridge Street into Howe Street, and imme- 

 diately behind Nile Street, there is a place called Stoney Batter. 

 The houses in Nile Street are evidently built on the edge of a 

 precipice, and the precipice before the erection of the Sun Inn 

 and adjacent houses was called Stoney Batter. Batter is a term 

 still in use among masons and builders, for when they build a 

 river wall they always put in it what they call batter — that is, 

 they make the wall incline outwardly from the base to the top — 

 hence Stoney Batter must have been a rocky hill inclining from 

 its base to its summit. Hallrake in Wappiug, Kakefoot off 

 Church Street, and Rakehead, near Ebenezer Chapel, in Burnley 

 Lane are cases in point. The two first are names contiguous to the 

 River Brun ; the left bank of the stream here shelves rapidly ; this 

 steep inclination of land was in old English called a rake. The 

 name hall attached to it is simply the Hall where a branch of the 

 Towneleys once dwelt, hence Hall Rake. Rake Foot is bottom of 

 Rake, and Rakehead is, of course, the head of the inclining land. 

 The word shorey does not seem to be well understood ; it is 

 simply the shore heigh land above the river, and Shorey Well is 

 a well near the bank of the river. The estate known as Shore- 

 heigh with Maries paid £3 a year to Towneley in 1535, so that it 

 was a large tract of land. Maries is an old name meaning soil, 

 that is a mixture of earth and lime. There must have been a 

 good deal of drift limestone here. Farmers used marie as a 

 manure in olden time ; so late as 1682 a letter on this subject 

 was published, entitled a letter from the ingenious Mr. Adam 

 Martindale of Cheshire, about improving land by marie. It is 

 not likely that the soil of Burnley Lane would do much to increase 

 the fertility of land. Keighley Green is simply the green or croft, 

 or little pasture of Keighley, a man's name. Keighley is a very 

 old name about Burnley. At the CUtheroe compotus, in 1295, a 

 Henry de Keighley is 14s. in arrears to the Earl Lacy, and I 

 believe a Keighley was the first Member of Parliament sent by 

 the County Palatine of Lancaster, but perhaps not resident in 

 the district of Burnley. Danes House, popularly named Dawnser 

 House,, is what its name implies — the house of the Dane. There 

 are many places in and around Burnley which are patronymic, 

 Waddington is a fine illustrative place, it means the town of the 



