iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Hello again Bluesky, it's been a while! Shamelessly returning cos I've got a new album to flog: Reverse Canterbury Pleasure. Download or CD digipak via Bandcamp. Much less blurry than my crap photo suggests! With a nice spine for neat alphabetical storage. paulcarbuncle.bandcamp.com/album/revers...

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Reposted by Paul Carbuncle

Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

My cartoon for this week’s Books pages in @theguardian.com

Image: A small, pretty English village. A girl with a bag on her shoulder runs towards a van on the other side of the village green. She says to herself "I've got to follow my heart and leave this sleepy village behind. A new life awaits on the open road, touring from town to town in a merry band of brilliant eccentrics!"

Title: “Rebecca runs away to join the travelling library”

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

An impressive offence to be sent off for.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

That's the spirit! Merry Christmas, one and all.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Also: one Larg grate & Creepers; with fire-shovel & tongus, gallow-tree & Runing hooks, & other fire Ireons – 15s. (1690), p. 148. [2/2]

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

#oedantedatings 3-year antedating of gallow(s)-tree (sense 2) ‘iron support for a pot over a fire’ (in #OED from 1590) Item one gallowtrye one pare of howkes & one landyron – 20d. (1587) Old Place, New Perspectives: a History of the Manor House of Old Sleaford, Lincolnshire (2020), p. 102 [1/2]

Photo of a large old red-brick fireplace containing a gallows-like framework from which to hang a cooking pot. Nothing's cooking at the moment.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

... Rats Castle Farm in/near Cadbury (Somerset). For Rats Castle in Lechlade (PN Gloucs 1·43) Hugh Smith says "probably a jocular name of a derelict building". Different explanations may suit different cases. I think we can at least say that a recognisable type exists: bird or small animal + castle.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

... Somerby (PN Leics 2·227), recorded in the mid-18th century - the earliest so far. Barrie Cox comments "castle presumably used in the sense 'a high safe place'". NB Crow not Crows, whatever that may or may not tell us. There are more rats too: Rats Castle Farm in Battle (Sussex) and ...

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

... doubt a term of contempt". And there's a Sparrow Castle in Cockburnspath (Berwicks). The s-less sparrows are remarkably consistent! Owls are harder to spot. In Sussex there's Owls Castle in Ticehurst and Owlscastle Farm in Rusper. One other bird I've spotted is the crow in Crow Castle in ...

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

... Sparrow Castle to be of a type in which sparrow denotes smallness. His examples, from Teversal (Notts) and Cridling Stubbs (West Yorks), both have Sparrow (not Sparrows) just like the Kent names - a notable difference from the Owls, Rats, and Spiders. The editors of PN Notts (p.137) say "no ...

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

... Rats Castle (8 instances) in Biddenden, Frittenden, Hackington, Langley, East Malling, Nettlestead, Tonbridge, and Wrotham; Spiders Castle (2 instances) in Eastchurch and Wye. These names look jocular and/or disparaging to me. In "A New Dictionary of English Field-Names", Paul Cavill takes ...

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Please pardon the delay! Examples from Kent (which I have to hand as it's the county I'm editing) are all first recorded late, there's nothing before the 19th century: Owls Castle in Meopham; Sparrow Castle (3 instances) in Acol, Ash next Sandwich, and St John the Baptist alias Margate. Compare ...

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

... in stand-alone genitival names like those 14th/15th-century "Ruddokes" forms, which typically contain tenants' surnames, often relating to identifiable families. I'll dig out Owls + Sparrows Castles (NB not medieval names) as soon as I'm back from the Great North Folk Festival - must dash now!

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Yes, you could argue that e.g. Redstone in Bratton Clovelly (PN Devon 175–6), recorded as Roddekeston in 1330, contains the bird-name rather than a hypocoristic form of the OE personal name Rudda; genitive singular doesn't preclude animal names at all. But that's as qualifiers in compounds, not ...

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

"Rudokes" 1369 in Oulton (PN Norfolk 3:97), Ruddocks Gore ("Ruddokkes" 1479) in Anstey + Barkway (PN Herts 297), Redoak Wood ("Ruddokes" 1403) in Theydon Bois (PN Essex 83) - all plausibly contain the surname. Place-names like Sparrows Castle and Owls Castle look good parallels for the Gloucs name.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Smith's analysis in the EPNS volume is open to interpretation. Other "Ruddock" place-names do seem to contain the surname (examples to follow), but this one's different, it's the full "Robin R" form. Ruddock has never been a Gloucs surname. Reddock forms with a front vowel are Scottish and locative.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

There's "Robin Reddocks Castle" recorded in 1628 in King's Stanley (PN Gloucs 2, p. 200), which nicely fits the pattern of bird-name + castle, but yep, I can't find any other robins. A most curious absence.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Great North Folk Festival this weekend, 11th–13th July, Botton Village, North York Moors, YO21 2NJ. I’m on at 6.30 and 10.50 on Friday evening (Foyer Folk both times), 2.10pm on Saturday (Joan of Arc Hall), and 3pm on Sunday (Joan of Arc Hall again). Sunshine and real ale forecast.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

#oedantedatings 32-year antedating of burling-iron 'pincers for extracting knots from wool' (in #OED from 1530) all the stuffe that longyth to my shope as wele the Walkers erthe as handylls and burlyngs yrnes (1498) Will of William Halowton, fuller, in Early #Northampton Wills, 214

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

I beg your Parbery? substack.com/@paulcarbuncle

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

#oedantedatings 63-year antedating of ewe-lease 'pasture for ewes' (in #OED from 1874) Wolverton Ewe-lees (1811) [in Charminster] #EPNS Place-Names of #Dorset 1, p. 342

Photo of about twenty ewes grazing in a large lush green field, with rolling wooded countryside in the distance. There is, of course, one black sheep among the otherwise white flock.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

#oedantedatings 42-year antedating of post-house (sense 1) 'inn or other building where horses are kept for the use of travellers' (in #OED from 1611) le posthowsse ten’ voc’ clavelles (1569) [in Piddlehinton] #EPNS Place-Names of #Dorset 1, p. 314

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Worrow and Macro, together at last. substack.com/@paulcarbuncle

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Critten! substack.com/@paulcarbuncle

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Vodden? substack.com/@paulcarbuncle

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Le Tokyngmyll (c.1447) [in Bothenhampton] Place-Names of Dorset 4, p. 476 terr’ voc’ Toukyngmyllfurlang (1450) [in Winfrith Newburgh] Place-Names of Dorset 1, p. 181 (2/2)

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

#oedantedatings 129-year antedating of tucking-mill ‘fulling-mill’ (in #OED from 1467–8) la Toukyngmulle (1338) [in Horningsham] #EPNS Place-Names of #Wiltshire, p. 442 curs’ aque apud la Toukyng Mull (1428) [in Turners Puddle] Place-Names of #Dorset 1, p. 297 (1/2)

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

#oedantedatings 76-year antedating of culver-house ‘dove-cote’ (in #OED from 1340) le Culverhouse (1264) Colverhouscroft (1270) #EPNS Place-Names of #Wiltshire, pp. 428, 437

Photograph of an intact medieval dovecote sitting amongst the fields and hedges of Sibthorpe in Nottinghamshire. It is a stone-built circular tower, tapering as it rises in two stages, with a conical tiled roof. A doorway is visible at ground level.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

#oedantedatings 145-year antedating of chalk-land (in #OED from 1941) Sainfoin. This is the most valuable of all the grasses cultivated in this county: and is much grown on the chalk-land of the eastern part (1796) John Boys, A General View of the Agriculture of the County of #Kent, p. 96

Black and white photo of the prominent chalk cross which was cut into a hillside at Lenham in 1922 as a war memorial. A tractor is at work in a field in the foreground, and neat rows of haycocks are visible.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Yep, in Early Medieval Europe 25 (2017). There's also OE -hǣme (gen. -hǣma) 'inhabitants of', used intriguingly with truncated forms of place-names that don't always have hām as the original generic element. (As for "connective" -ing-, we don't know if it meant anything different from the genitive!)

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Beware of confusing so-called "connective" -ing- with the group-name suffix -ingas (-inga- in the genitive). As there are no <Snoddingaland> or <Snoddingeland> spellings for the well-recorded name Snodland we should interpret it as 'land associated with *Snodd' rather than 'land of *Snodd's people'.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Shocked to read that Tula was only, errrm, "5 ft. 12 in." - she looks a full 6 ft. to me. youtu.be/90wBwE1kw1g?...

youtu.be

3-2-1 - 'Cruising' (1978)

YouTube video by gbgameshows

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Ahh, thank you, I'd missed the "Expand quote" button - very handy. "Wårfrushem" is a wonderfully inventive creation to explain a name for which the earliest record is "Vam" in the 13th century! Got to wonder how circular the reasoning is there. (Yes, place-names suffer attrition, but not like that.)

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

A fabulous site! I'm now hooked. Any idea whether Forssenius had independent evidence for the dedication of Våmb to Mary, or was he guessing based on the sculptures?

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Did you use a seed-drill? I think as long as you used a seed-drill it would have been good practice. Tibbie the fudge-expert says "Thank you very much, Alan, the fudge is lovely!" There's not much of it left now, though I only had two lumps of it myself. Would you mind popping back for another box?

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

... is most certainly a bad practice (1796) John Boys, A General View of the Agriculture of the County of #Kent (London, 1796), p. 59

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

#oedantedatings 36-year antedating of broadcast (adv. sense a.) 'scattered widely over a suface' (in #OED from 1832) The constant practice of making summer-fallows in many counties for wheat, and sowing beans broad-cast after it, and then recurring to a fallow again ... (1/2)

In a cheery watercolour illustration, a gaily dressed farmer with curly white locks scatters seeds by hand over a field. His waist-high seedlip is hung around his neck. A plough-team of two horses is at work in another part of the field. We are drawn to the farmer's bright blue cravat, a distraction from the dead rabbit which droops from his jacket pocket.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Good people of Nottingham, please join us for some music-making!

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

#oedantedatings 143-year antedating of cheese-chamber 'room in which cheese is dried or stored' (in #OED from c.1632) j narke standyng in the chese chamber and oon of the newe small cheyers (1489) Will of Isbell Geffron, Early #Northampton Wills, p. 152

Eight large round white cheeses sit on two wooden shelves. We catch a tiny glimpse of more cheeses on a shelf above. It all smells lovely, I'm sure.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

#oedantedatings 77-year antedating of hunting-horn (in #OED from 1694) Then he maid one of his servants go in unto the park and blow on ane hunting horne, bot assoone as the wyld beastes off divers sortes heard the blowing of the horne, they cam skipping ... (1617) [1/2]

A medieval hunting scene in open woodland on a bright day. A stag flees from a band of huntsmen, some on horseback, some with hounds. Three of the huntsmen are blowing curved horns.

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Paul Carbuncle @paulcarbuncle.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

South Devon is a Bastard hotspot. Of 418 bearers of the surname in Great Britain in the 1881 Census, 94 were in Devon. By 1997 there were only 30 bearers in the whole of GB, so it's a rapidly dying name.

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