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187 
of a junction of two Roman roads at Congresbury which gave 
some support to the tradition of its having been the seat of a 
bishop, or at least contributed a negative to the argument against 
the tradition on the ground of the inaccessibility of the place. 
A description of the Battle of Lansdown followed (vide 
p. 145.) Mr. Green, the author of this and several other useful 
papers of local and historical interest, (for which the Club is much 
indebted to him,) was enabled by his access to the Clarendon 
MSS. to give a more detailed, and in some respects more correct 
version of this battle than existed previously. The principal 
point of the subsequent discussion turned upon the age and 
origin of the numerous pits near the site of the battle ; and the 
general opinion seemed to be that, made prior to the battle of 
1643 for purposes of quarrying tile-stone, they had been most 
probably made use of by the combatants on the occasion. 
Dr. Hunter in the chair, the Rev. Preb. EARLE, on Feb. 17th, 
gave the result of his etymological researches in an address to 
the Club on “Local Names.” As Mr. Earle’s remarks cannot 
be given in full in the body of our Proceedings an uncorrected 
abstract only is presented. 
Local names, he said, greatly interest us by the enigmatical aspect which 
they now present. Strange as they now seem, they were once descriptive 
of the face of the country as it appeared to men of a thousand years 
ago. They are of different ages, and had their birth among people who 
spoke different languages, and may be classed chronologically in the order 
in which the land was occupied by different races, The natural features of 
the country, the hills and the streams, retain in the main the names given 
them by the British inhabitants, the political divisions are still known by 
the names given by their English founders. The very common river name 
Avon was at first merely a word signifying river, and numerous names 
such as Axe, Exe, Ouse, Usk, Isca, are but forms of one and the same 
Celtic word meaning water. The name Yeo is probably the same as Gwy, 
the Welsh word which we call Wye. The ignorance of succeeding people 
has often added a word of similar import to the British original. We hear 
of the river Avon, and on its opposite bank of the Dolemeads ; then again 
“we have Windermere lake, Pen hill, Wookey hole, the British word Ogo 
