PLACE NAMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 67, 21 March 1938, Page 6

PLACE NAMES.

SOME CURIOUS EXAMPLES. (By W. H. OWENS.) There ie a certain signpost in Kent that i directs the motorist to Ham Sandwich, but if ;he wants Beer as well he must travel down to South Devon. Many of Britain's lonelier villages and hamlets have strange names. Wigwig, for example, is not a new kind of dance, but the name of a remote village in Shropshire. There are few place names in the kingdom quite so depressing as Dead Maidens, Hampshire. In Cornwall, on the other hand, Gome to Good sounds inviting— indeed, it'e a food sjrot if you like unspoilt ■beauty. Little in Sight and Hard to Come By are two more Cornteh gems, and for sheer curiosity it would be difficult to -beat Ystpitty Ystwith in the far west of Wales. You may discover a village called Xasty while motoring in Hertfordshire, while an Essex beauty spot goes by the name of Ugley. A most unjust and inappropriate title! There is pleasant contrast, nevertheless, in the names Red Roses, Pembrokeshire, and St. Anthony-in-Koseland, Cornwall. The last is quite true to its- name, for flowers bloom gaily in the cottage gardens for the greater part of the year. Very different from its noisy namesake on the far side of the Atlantic is Broadway, a quiet and beautiful village in the Cotswold country. There is also Gibraltar, in Suffolk, Melbourne, in Derbyshire, and Quebec, in Durham. Then you can complete a round-the-world trip in England by visiting the hamlet of Washington in the Sussex Down*. Many placee in this country have changed their names at various times. Over a thousand years ago there was a town on the East Coast called Lotha Wistoft, meaning a group, of houses on a slow river. To-day the place is well known to many thousands of tourists and holidav-makere as Lowestoft.