Mistel = mistletoe (ta. fem.—tdig) may appear in Mistleham, near Appledore.
Caelf = calf. The Saxon name for Challock was Caelf-loca-n, i.e., enclosed place for calves. The second syllable suggests the Latin locus, but is the source of our English Lock, i.e., shut up. So the locks on the river; and pounds for straying cattle are “lokes” in East Anglia.
Pleg-huses = theatres (or recreation grounds). Our Plaistow and Plaxtol.
Syla = wallowing place. So our numerous Soles, which I later enumerate.
Dimhus and Dimhof = hiding or dark place. Our Dymchurch are instances.
Crocc and Hweras are both Saxon for pots. Few know what pure Saxon they use when they talk of crockery-ware. Pottery was always a great industry from Sittingbourne to Sheppey, and the Romans appreciated and extended it. This may account for our Crokham Hill, Crockham, Crockhurst Street, and Crockshard.
Cocca, gen. plural = chickens. Cock St., Cockham Wood, Cockshill, Coxheath, Cockadam Shaw, while in Detling we have Cock-hill, Upper and Lower Cox Street. Some may, of course, be modern and personal names; but I cannot so trace them.
Boley Hill, near Rochester, was undoubtedly a place of civic importance in very early days. It was a Danish meeting place corresponding to our shire-mote at Pennington Heath, and we may best trace its name to a Danish word which we still use—the bole of a tree. This is found in various parts of the Danish district of Lincolnshire, and the reference may be to the hill with a famous tree under which the court of the community was held. Trees, as well as cromlechs or great stones, were common landmarks in Saxon times—hence our various Stones in Kent. Others, however, consider it a corruption of Beaulieu, a name given by the Templars to the sites of their preceptories, and they instance a Boley or Bully Mead in East London, which belonged to the Templars. And others, because of its ancient legal associations, think it should be Bailey Hill, and refer us to the Old Bailey in London.
Farleigh.—On a clear day from Detling Hill we can see, not only Farleigh, near Maidstone, but Fairlight Church, near Hastings. In Saxon days and documents these place-names were the same, and so in Domesday (1086), each is Ferlega, the passage or fareing through the pastures or leys, just as our modern Throwley is Trulega, with the scribes’ variations in 12th century deeds of Thruleghe, Trulleda, Trulea, Thrulege, and Trudlege. Fairlight, therefore, is simply a modern corruption after a fashion which once corrupted the name of Leigh, near Tonbridge, which I find written Legh in 1435, Ligth in 1513, Lyghe in 1525, and Lyght in 1531. It has been suggested that the first syllable may indicate a personal name, Fær; but this seems less tenable.
Borstall, from the Anglo-Saxon Beorg, a hill, and stal, a dwelling (as in Tunstall), means a path up a steep hill. So there is Borstall Hill near Rochester, Bostall Hill near Woolwich, and Borstall Hill by Whitstable. And I have noted a passage in White’s Selborne—he made a path up the wooded steep hill near his vicarage called the Hanger, and he writes: “Now the leaf is down, the Bostall discovers itself in a faint, delicate line running up the Hanger.”