Phil Brown & Clive Collins
Yarn Hill confirmation?
A
dam Gretton’s comment in #167 that Yarn Hill, not far from Snape, might be a contender as evidence of White-tailed Eagle’s presence in the area during earlier times might have been borne out by a recent article.
This article appeared in Bird Study, and was entitled ‘The history of eagles in Britain and Ireland: an ecological review of placename and documentary evidence from the last 1500 years’ (Bird Study Vol. 59 number 3 pp.335 – 349). The authors utilised placenames to infer evidence for the presence of both Golden and White-tailed Eagle in Britain and Ireland. The supplementary evidence table attached to this article only revealed three such names across Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk – all were Old English (i.e. pre 1150) and were suggestive of White-tailed Eagles’ presence more than 900 years ago. The three were Arnold’s Farm in Essex, Erneford in Norfolk and, last but not least, Yarn Hill at Iken in Suffolk. But Clive Collins raises some reservations about this ‘evidence’. He wrote “ There would have to be a question-mark over the Essex ‘Arnold’s Farm’ at TQ4997. According to the standard reference work ‘The Place-names of Essex’ by P. H. Reaney, published as Volume XII in the English Place-name Society series (CUP 1935), ‘Arnold’s Farm’ in the Chelmsford Hundred (which is in the TQ4997 grid square) took its name from the family of a John Arnold, recorded as living in the area in 1289.” So the inference drawn in the Bird Study article from the name may have been wrong and the assertion that it was from Old English possibly incorrect too.
Clive then continued, stating that he’d “had a look at ‘The older history of the White-tailed Eagle in Britain’ by Derek Yalden (British Birds 100, August 2007 pp.471 – 480). His map – Fig. 1 ‘Map of place-names including the element ‘earn’ ‘ – shows nothing for Essex or Suffolk, and one dot for Norfolk, somewhere near Lowestoft . . . but nowhere near Erneford, which is inland near Swaffham. The accompanying Table 1, a list of place-names with ‘earn’ elements, has nothing for East Anglia at all, although it does include a Yarns Hill in West Riding Yorkshire, and many others with ‘Yarn’ in various compounds, mostly in the south-west.” Then Clive added “Mary Gelling in ‘Anglo-Saxon Eagles’ (Leeds Studies in English Vol. 18, pages 173-181) lists nine ‘yarn’ place-names but not a Suffolk ‘Yarn Hill’, and nothing at all for Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.” What are we to make of this? Personally I’d like to congratulate Adam for recalling Yalden’s article and raising the entire subject. On balance, given the habitat, it was certainly possible that White-tailed Eagle were present in Suffolk, but perhaps not in great numbers. THE HARRIER – October 2012
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