100 Place-Names 



spelling Camhrigge, and this was sometimes Latinised as Camus. Rhee is 

 from Old English ea "river"; cEt pxreea "by the river" became Middle 

 English at ther ee, which was wrongly divided as at the ree. In 1285, 

 WiUiam atte Ree lived by the Granta at Grantchester. 



Ely occurs first, in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, as Elge "eel-district". 

 The second element is the archaic ge, corresponding to the German gau, 

 found also in the names Surrey, Eastry, Lyminge, and Sturry in Kent, and 

 Vange in Essex. Here, too, popular etymology was early at work and, 

 already in the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede, the name appears as Elig 

 "eel-island". Domesday Book records the yield of innumerable eels from 

 the fisheries of Ely and renders of eels were common elsewhere in the 

 island. In Sutton, too, was a place called Cappelode, a name identical with 

 the Lincolnshire Whaplode, "eelpout stream". 



These names are ot especial interest because of their age. Cambridge 

 and Grantchester contain the Celtic name of the river Granta. Grant- 

 chester, too, was a folk-name — "the settlers on the Granta", the second 

 element being that found in the names of such large districts as Dorset 

 and Somerset. Ely was the name of the whole island, called by Bede a 

 regio and in the Anglo-Saxon version peodlond. These names are of high 

 antiquity and may well date from the Anglian settlement which archaeo- 

 logists agree in placing in the latter half of the fifth century. 



From the earliest periods, the estuary of the Wash has been a magnet 

 for successive hordes of invaders from beyond the sea, and its river valleys 

 have afforded an easy way inland. The Angles found the Feiiland largely 

 unattractive for settlement. They pushed on, and clear evidence of their 

 former presence has been found in a number of cemeteries in the Cam 

 VaUey, where the finds point clearly to a settlement by the end of the fifth 

 century.' Numerous place-names of recognised early type might therefore 

 be expected here. But of the oldest type, that ending in -ingas, there is only 

 one, Kirthng, as against some twenty-four in the neighbouring county of 

 Essex, where, too, names pointing to heathen worship are common. Of 

 these, in Cambridgeshire there is not one. The probable explanation of 

 this curious contradiction — the absence of numbers of place-names of high 

 antiquity combined with clear archaeological proof of very early setde- 

 ment — ^is that the struggles for supremacy between East and JVliddle 

 Anghan and the Danish invasions resulted in such confusion, devastation, 

 and depopulation that memory of the names of all but the most important 

 places was utterly lost. 



Names of early type do exist. Badlingham, Cottenham, Dullingham, 



' R. G. Collingwood and J. N. L. Ayres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements 

 (1936), pp. 386-7. 



