138 THE FORESTS OP ENGLAND. 



I)regg. In this name the etymologist may perceive a 

 sorruption of Dericht oj: Dregh, which in Scottish and in 

 Irish is a name given to the oak. The adjacent country 

 was, it is said, formerly thickly covered with oaks, and the 

 remains of ancient forests are at times discovered in cut- 

 ting drains. 



A place of which frequent mention is made in ancient 

 British history is Quatford. It is in the centre of a forest 

 district, including the ancient Forest of Morfe and the 

 Forest of Wyre on the confines of Shropshire. It is said 

 that quat is the Saxon form of the British coed, a forest. 



Berkshire was formerly completely covered with a forest, 

 called by the Britons Berroc, and from this the county 

 takes its name. Lindhurst is the Lime or Linden Wood ; 

 and Lymington sounds as if it had had some connection 

 with the same kind of tree. 



In such names of places embodying a reference to woods 

 and woodlands in various parts of England, where it may 

 be nothing to justify the name is now to be seen, we seem 

 to have indications ,of the country having been ^formerly 

 much more extensively wooded than it is now ; and indi- 

 cations of the places bearing these names having been 

 situated in woodlands. 



A word of caution, however, in connection with the use 

 of names of places as evidences of the former existence of 

 woodlands in the locality may be called for. It will, I 

 presume, be admitted by students of such matters that 

 Oakham, in Rutland, is descriptive of the town, as the 

 town in the Oak wood. But we have a town in Devon- 

 shire called Oakhamton, which had no connection with 

 any Oak wood : it bears a name which can be traced to a 

 local position not less well defined. It is situatad on the 

 river Okement. A writer in the Cornhill Magazine for 

 November, 1882, on A Corner ofDevon,tells that, in some 

 unpublished manumissions of serfs entered on the fly- 

 leaves of Bishop Leofric's Missal he found what is probably 

 the earliest form of the town's name, Ocmundtun, i.e., the 



