Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request Woodchurch Estate Road Names

Just thinking to myself the other day (painful as it was) and I got to wondering about some of the road names on the Woody. Some of them seem to derive from the old tithe map names for the different plots , whilst others may have other derivations ,for example Glebe Hey Road or Carr Bridge Road . I've found out what a Carr is and a Glebe - but what is a Hey ?
It may be derived from a Cheshire dialect but I can't seem to find it anywhere.
I'm sure someone on Wiki can help.Thanking you in advance.

I think it's an old Saxon word meaning enclosure.

According to this website ...
http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/places.html
... it means 'animal feeding stalls.'

Slightly off-topic, but as regards road names on the Woody, how do you pronounce Houghton Road?
Is it HORton Road, or HOWton Road?

a hey is an enclosed field. It's Old English but used fairly late as a term.

Horton

Yes I thought it was that - so unlike Ray Houghton, the ex LFC player!

Could it be a variant of 'hay'? If so would tie in with the land use of that area prior to the development of the estate, as indicated by another road name there, 'Home Farm Road' #justathought

As in 'Fox Hey Rd' in Wallasey?

Update regarding the idea that 'hey' is derived from Old English for 'enclosure, according to an OE Dictionary http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm

'enclose' used the OE word clyppan while 'surround' was ymbsellan in OE

enclosed land used the OE word pearroc

Bosworth & Toller's definitive Anglo-Saxon dictionary also notes that the AS for 'enclosure' was pearroc

This being so, we need to look elsewhere for the origin of 'hey' as applying to the Woodchurch.

Glebe - wikipedia

In the Roman Catholic and Anglican church traditions, a glebe was an area of land belonging to a benefice. This was property (in addition to the parsonage house and grounds) which was assigned to support the priest.[2] Glebe included a wide variety of properties including strips in the open field system or could be grouped together into a compact plot of land.[1] Tithes were in early times the main means of support for the parish clergy but glebe land was either granted by the lord of the manor of the manor in which the church was situated, often with co-terminous boundaries as the parish, or accumulated from other donations of particular pieces of land and was rarely sold. The amount of such land varied from parish to parish, occasionally forming a complete glebe farm. Information about the glebe would be recorded at ecclesiastical visitations in a glebe "terrier" (Latin terra, land).[3] It could also entail complete farms, individual fields, shops, houses, or factories.[citation needed] A holder of a benefice could retain the glebe for his own use, usually for agricultural exploitation, or he could "farm" it (i.e. lease it) to others and retain the rent as the income.[1]

The word Hey (sometimes spelt Hay or Haie) is derived from the OE hege and simply means a hedge or fence. By extension the word came to be used for any field or enclosure surrounded by a hedge or fence. It's use in this sense became widespread in Lancashire and Cheshire following the passing of the various Enclosure Acts in the 18th and 19th centuries, but numerous examples can be found prior to this as well.

And in French a hedge is "une haie" so obviously the same root.