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or rabbit, or rabbit burrow, and indicates the existence of a 
warren here in olden times. Conkwell is then like Conygre— 
Cuniculi-ager. A corruption of the Latin name Cunyng, is an 
archaic English name for Rabbit; and a more likely place for 
rabbits cannot be found than the woods and fields adjoining, and 
they have their impregnable fortress in the hollow rocks on all 
sides.* Whether the well or spring that supplies the village 
accounts for the latter part of the word Conk well may be doubted. 
It may be a corruption of /ylle-Hill, in the charter it is eaze or 
jield. 'The bounds go down Conkwell Lane to the southern end 
of the wood, called now Warleigh Wood and through two fields 
to the Avon. The uppermost of these fields is called Gatticks’ 
and Garricks. The former is a corruption of Gate-lVuke,+ so 
spelt in the Survey; the keeper of the gates or way of the 
Manor would doubtless have a cottage here, and there would be 
a gate into the Conkwell Lane out of this the last field on the 
Manor. The next field is the Westmead, or the western meadow 
of the Manor, and here we have the Avon for a boundary mid- 
stream back again as far as Paradise Close. 
But there are some names of fields along the course of the river 
that are interesting and suggestive, and it is a very pleasant 
walk by which to return to Bath. You first come to the Great 
and Little Oxmead, which may mean the Water Meadows, 
from oc, or ocche, a British word for water-stream, as they are 
very wet still unless the drains coming out of the wood are 
kept clear into the ditches, and there are several longitudinal 
mounds, which may have served the purpose of damming up the 
water from springs for irrigation. The meaning which however 
was most in our minds formerly was that the meadows in 
question were used for fattening oxen. In the Great Oxmead are 
* Tt may interest Geologists to know that this rock-fortress of the rabbits can 
be traced in “‘ conic” sections in an old quarry under the tield called Biggs Lease 
adjoining Conkwell. 
+ Geat, Sax., a gate, an opening, a gap ; Wie, village, or station. 
