Saturday, 18 October 2008

A Strange Place To Live


One of the millions of things I love about Britain and British people is our uncanny ability to laugh at ourselves and our surroundings. We have a bizarre sense of humour, something that has been developed over centuries.

I live in a place called Manchester, which is a fairly sensible name for a city. There are, however, many rather bizarre towns and villages scattered throughout the United Kingdom with names that are far from sensible; in fact I would say they are crazy. Whoever conceived these names over the years must have had an eccentric idea of what constitutes a good name for the place that they live in. Or maybe our maybe our ancestors simply wanted to give their communities silly names as a joke.

Listed below are genuine names of British towns and villages. I can imagine that you will not believe that they exist but I swear that they do. I have discovered some on the internet but I promise you that I have actually been to or through these some of these places. If you don’t believe me, pop the name into Google Map.

Asick Bottom
Barton In The Beans
Besses o’th’barn
Biggar
Bishops Itchington
Bitchfield
Blackadder
Blubberhouses
Cockermouth
Crackpot
Crapstone
Dyke
Fatfield
Gaywood
Great Snoring
Horsey Windpump
Leatherhead
Loggerheads
Looe
Lover
Lower Dicker
Lower Slaughter
Nether Wallop
Nobber
Once Brewed
Outcast
Pant
Penistone
Pity Me
Pratts Bottom
Ramsbottom
Sheepscar
Spital In The Street
Splott
Tongue
Twatt
Ugley
Upper Dicker
Upperthong
Wetwang
Wyre Piddle

I often wonder why how these names came to be but it is probably more prudent to simply enjoy them and ask no questions. I’m off now to visit a friend in Pity Me though I will avoid Ugley, Pratts Bottom and Splott because I’ve heard traffic around there is dreadful. I may drive through Lover though just to see what it’s like.

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10 comments:

  1. cube18 October 2008 at 21:52

    lol! I think the Brits have an especially wicked sense of humor.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Plastic Mancunian18 October 2008 at 23:07

    We do indeed.Long live silly place names.

    Cheers

    PM

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous19 October 2008 at 02:22

    Holy cow! As I read your post I realized that I was in the town of Mind In Gutter!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Plastic Mancunian19 October 2008 at 10:15

    I'll bet there is a Hamlet called something similar

    :-)

    Cheers

    PM

    ReplyDelete
  5. cube19 October 2008 at 15:50

    And long live silly walks too!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Plastic Mancunian19 October 2008 at 16:53

    Yes indeed

    :-)

    Cheers

    PM

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous20 October 2008 at 18:25

    We Filipinos are a bunch of humor-filled peepz. Our identity is being known as people who can laugh at ourselves

    ReplyDelete
  8. Plastic Mancunian20 October 2008 at 18:41

    Never been there Bingkee but would love to visit.

    Any nation that can laugh at themselves gets the thumbs up in my opinion.

    :-)

    Cheers

    PM

    ReplyDelete
  9. Pia K20 October 2008 at 20:34

    ... and that's exactly one of the reasons intelligent Swedes love Britain and its humour:) We also have our fair share of weirdly named villages here, perhaps it's a kindred feeling?

    I was in Blackadder this past summer, and have the photographs to prove it. Seems like a pretty nice place.

    And well, let's just say I found the name Cockermouth pretty darn funny, I named a kitten (British Shorthair of course) that many years ago...:)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Plastic Mancunian20 October 2008 at 21:14

    I'd love to go to Sweden, Pia. I've been to most countries in Europe but Scandanavia is still very much on my list.

    I'll have to do some research on Swedish town names. A subject for a future post I think.

    ;-)

    Cheers

    PM

    ReplyDelete