TH White: very reasonable English placenames

[highlyeccentric]

Via hunningham, here's TH White (in 'Mistress Masham's Repose') characterising English toponymy:

She went by Malplaquet-in-the-Mold to Maid's Malplaquet, turned left through the parishes of Gloomleigh, Marshland and Malplaquet St.Swithin's, but across the Northampton road for Bishop's Boozey and Duke's Doddery, skirted the famous fox covert at Monk's-Unmentionable-cum-Mumble, doubled back from Bumley-Beausnort to Biggle and ate her sandwiches in the gorse patch on the round barrow at Dunamany Wenches, overlooking the drovers' road to Ort.
... they pottered off through Idiot's Utterly, High Hiccough, Malplaquet Middling, and Mome.

Really, only Monk's-Unmentionable-cum-Mumble seems a stretch too far here. I'm sure I've been to Beausnort.

Comments

[sabotabby]

Is England even a real place, discuss

[reynardo]

I do love Lower Slaughter.

[hunningham]

Upper Slaughter is the interesting one. It's one of the three(?) Thankful villages. No war memorial. Nether Kellet (another good place name) is another and I forget the 3rd.

No war memorial = every man who went to fight in WWI came back alive. Every single little picturesque village in England will have a war memorial at its heart. But not Upper Slaughter.