A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



of the adjoining manors as ' Est ' and West ' Thorndon.' The latter 

 knight's will spells the names similarly, and so does that of his descendant 

 in 1527.* On July 25, 1423, the Crown also presented to the church 

 as to that of ' Est Thorndon.' * The returns in Feudal Aids distinguish 

 ' Thorndon ' and ' Horndon ' as carefully as does Domesday, where 

 ' Torninduna ' and ' Horninduna ' are entered on the same page. We 

 may therefore safely say that, exactly as with Laindon and Langdon, 

 Morant was mistaken in assuming that the two names were identical, 

 and that Horndon-on-the-Hill is the representative of the ' Horninduna ' 

 of Domesday, while its ' Torninduna ' is represented by East and West 

 Thorndon, as they used to be, and ought to be, named. 3 



To those who are inexperienced in the study of county history it 

 may seem a matter of small moment that ' Horndon ' and ' Thorndon ' 

 should have been confused.* But without the most scrupulously careful 

 distinction between places similar or identical in name the descent of the 

 manors they contain is reduced to a hopeless jumble, especially where, 

 as is the case in Essex, such similarity or identity is of very frequent 

 occurrence. 



Moreover, the facts established above illustrate in a forcible manner 

 the strong tendency on the lips of the people to the corruption of local 

 place-names by wrongful assimilation of the true form to a neighbouring 

 but distinct name. Due west of the Thorndons, and just within the 

 Essex border, we see this process exemplified in the striking case of 

 Walthamstow. Entered in Domesday as ' Wilcumestou,' it continues 

 to occur in records as ' Welcomstowe,' ' Welcumestou,' ' Welcomes- 

 towe,' and so forth, down to at least the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 

 turies, when it meets us as ' Welcomstowe,' ' Wolcomestoue ' and 

 ' Wolkhomstowe.' It is obvious that the modern ' Walthamstow ' is a 

 corruption due to the near neighbourhood of the great parish of 

 Waltham. It also appears to me that Shellow owes the addition of its 

 ' Bowells ' suffix 6 to the fact that it was only divided by Fyfield from 

 the neighbouring Shelley, and that here too there was a tendency to 

 confuse on the lips of the people these distinct place-names. 



Something has been said above (p. 391) of one of the two types 

 represented among Essex parishes, namely that in which the parish 

 comprises two or more Domesday manors which appear, from their 

 distinct names, to have been once distinct vills. As this type is detected 

 only by local knowledge or minute research, 6 it is naturally less familiar 



1 Essex Archceokgical Transactions [n.s.] vi. 54-7. 8 Pat. i Hen. VI. p. 2, m. 3. 



3 Horndon-on-the-Hill contains 2,650 acres, and the two Thorndons together 2,925. 



4 The Petre family adhered rightly to the form ' Thorndon,' and even when a new parish church 

 was erected (1734) for Ingrave and West Horndon a contemporary inscription styles the latter, 'Thorn- 

 don Occidentali(s) ' (see Morant, i. 215). 



6 See p. 356 above. 



6 It is somewhat overlooked by Prof. Maitland, who holds that, ' as a general rule, the political 

 geography of England was already stereotyped' in 1086, that when Domesday Book 'mentions the 

 name of a place . . . speaking very generally we may say that the place so named will in after times be 

 known as a vill and in our own day will be a civil parish.' . . . ' A place that is mentioned in Domes- 

 day Book will probably be recognized as a vill in the thirteenth, as a civil parish in the nineteenth 



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