Harrow

This article of mine appears in the Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 42 (2010), 43-62. I examine evidence that in most cases the place-name Harrow does not mean ‘heathen temple’ as stated in many reference books. When it is a field-name, this is never the case.

This paper was presented as Why are so many East Anglian fields called Harrow? at the conference Place-names and landscape: recent research in Cambridge 2011-02-26

addendum

1. 2011-08-07: Mike Headon emails as follows: “I 've just finished putting together a corpus of names for my own parish of Llandrillo-yn-Rhos in historical Denbighshire - the area now occupied by Colwyn Bay in Conwy unitary authority. [...] Of about 900 field-names — practically all Welsh, only one refers to a harrow. The field-name is Cae'r og, ‘harrow field [og = harrow]’. SH 8620 7726, height 135m, aspect NE. Parcel no. 1065, 9:2:34 = 3.93ha, Arable. The field is a rough W-shape (so not harrow-shaped). It was adjacent to the farmhouse of Cefn-y-ffynnon, a hill-farm.”

bibtex citation

@STRING(JEPNS="Journal of the English Place-name Society")
@article{JEPNS-42-Briggs-Harrow,
  author={Keith Briggs},
  title={Harrow},
  journal=JEPNS,
  volume={42},
  pages={43--62},
  year={2010},
}