Bottom Controversy

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 12

Bottom Controversy

SOMEWHERE between Bromley and Sevenoaks in darkest, stiffest upperlippish Kent, lives Mr Clifford Hall. Now Mr Hall is a sensitive man and he was digusted when Bromley Council put outside his house a large sign reading “Pratt’s Bottom.” The erection of the sign has started a nation-wide controversy about the suitability of English place names (Pratt’s Bottom is a place). Mr Hall has started an organisation to fight the sign outside his house on purely parish pump grounds. First, he claims, the hamlet of Pratt’s Bottom does not start until several yards past his house, and, second, the name is “ridiculous and offensive.” Many another villager reading of Mr Hall’s battle against officialdom and offensiveness has rallied to the cause. From all over England come “anti-bottom” cries.

There are a surprising number of such place names in

Eragland’s green and pleasant land. Most are fugitives from easier-going times when a valley or dale was known as a bottom—and if a yeoman named Pratt or Smith or Jones owned it, the area was named after him. The good people of Pratt’s Bottom, Kent, led by Mr Hail, readily called for an end to this nonsense where a group of students hired a bus to run from Pratt’s Bottom to Elmer’s End. There are lots of such ‘'ends” around England, too. But, to be objective, is living in a bottom the end of the world? Sure, there’s Bock’s Bottom, Magpie Bottom and Brattle’s Bottom near Pratt’s Bottom. There’s Comely Bottom near Portsmouth, Knith’s Bottom, Pett Bottom and Lynsore Bottom. Army maps even show a place called Otty Bottom Cott. But there are worse-named places to live in, such as Lusted, Shellow Bowells, Bitehetit Green or Starverow.