Derivation of the Name. 247 



few words about it, which for the value of them might as well have 

 been left unsaid — " Pottern is only remarkable for giving name to 

 the hundred, which shews that anciently it was the most noted 

 town in it, how mean so ever it be now/' — John Britton, though he 

 dilates on " The Devizes," says not one word about Potterne. There 

 is just a passing notice of it in Mrs. Gaskell's " Sylvia's Lovers" 

 (p. 399), in which it is described as "a quiet little village, far inland, 

 nestled beneath the stretches of Salisbury Plain ; " but descriptions, 

 however pretty, furnish few materials to the topographer. 



And first of all, as to the Name, and its probable, or, I should 

 rather say, its possible, derivation. It. is not confined to Wilts, for 

 Hutch ins tells us that a small manor in Verwood, a tithing and 

 hamlet in Up-Wimborn Hundred, was called Pottern, or Wim- 

 born Pottern. A suggestion has been made that it is derived from 

 the Anglo-Saxon putte (though I only find the word 2& pyt in the 

 dictionary), which means a well, and the termination cern (as in 

 Q,Q[-erne, Q\s\\.-terne, &c.), which signifies a dwelling, so that the 

 whole word might mean a " dwelling by the well." But this does not 

 carry any conviction to my mind. The Anglo-Saxon word is certainly 

 never spelt^o^, and can only mean at best an artificial v^^,\t's, original 

 signification being a pit or hole. In a place that may be des- 

 cribed as a " land of springs " such an artificial well would not only 

 be unnecessary, but also most unlikely to give a name to a large 

 tract of country. Besides its numerous wells or springs (for such 

 was the meaning of well in olden time), give names to divers 

 places already, and it is hardly possible to imagine the introduction 

 of another word, with a similar signification, providing the name of 

 Potterne. Thus we have East-well, Frog-well, Butter-well, Sugar- 

 well, Bottomless-well. Of the last, as we are on etymologies, I 

 cannot help giving you an interpretation derived from a genuine 

 Wiltshireman. Speaking of the field through which it flows, he said 

 — "Thick field be all zaft (^soft), an' in the zummer it be all so 

 peaty-like that it do zeem all on a quake, jest as if he'd got no 

 bottom to 'un." 



But another derivation that has been suggested to me traces the 

 name to a Celtic source. Certainly in the neighbourhood there is a 



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