Ever wondered what Bobbers Mill was, or how Hyson Green got its name?
They might have once been villages which were consumed by the city; or they may have been created later, as the urban area expanded during the Industrial Revolution.
But Nottingham's suburbs have an interesting variety of names, ranging from those which are fairly easily understood (The Meadows, Bulwell) to those which are a bit more obscure.
We've had a look at where nine places where you might not know where the name originated. (And yes, there's a couple that are outside the city boundaries, but we liked how they got their names, so we left them in).
Arnold
Seen many eagles in Arnold recently? Probably not. But the name means 'land where eagles are seen'.
It appears in the Domesday Book as Ernehale, which is literally translated as 'eagle-slope' (the white-tailed eagle is also known as the 'erne'). However, given that the land around Arnold is not really the sort of habitat preferred by eagles, it's more likely that 'land where herons are seen' is a more accurate interpretation.
Over time, the name of the town changed to Arnhale and then to Arnold.
Beeston
The name comes from the Saxon 'beos-tun'.
Beos meant bent grass, reeds or rushes, the kind of vegetation that would have grown in the area.
And a tun - or farmstead - would have given its name to the settlement. The farmstead would probably have been built on the site in order for the workers to cut and sell the reeds to thatchers, or to use the rich pastures for cattle grazing.
Bobbers Mill
It's no longer there, but Bobbers Mill was indeed named after a mill, on the River Leen.
The river was much more important in past times than it is today, supplying both Nottingham Castle and two monasteries. And it had nearly 20 mills along its banks, including Bobbers Mill, originally a corn mill.
As the Industrial Revolution took hold, many of the old corn mills where converted into Cotton Mills.
The mill in the picture below was built in 1880, and operated until 1958. However, the first record of a mill there was back in 1438.
Dunkirk
Any relation to Dunkirk in France? Unfortunately not. 'Dun' was an Anglo-Saxon term for 'hill' and kirk is another name for 'church, so it probably just means 'church on the hill'. Not too many hills there now, though.
Hyson Green
This is one where there's still some debate. One theory says that a local man called John Ison had gardens and two houses, which were known as 'Ison Green', and which over time became Hyson Green.
Another is that the area was once sandy scrubland known as 'High Sands' - to distinguish it from the 'low sands' of Radford - and that this then became corrupted into 'Hyson'.
Lenton
The first part of its name seems certain to have come from the River Leen which flows through it. And as with Beeston, the suffix '-tun' or '-ton' means a farmstead, or a cluster of homesteads.
Netherfield
Anything to do with your nether regions? In a way. 'Nether' means 'below, under or beneath' or, sometimes, 'low-lying'.
So, just as Holland is known as the Netherlands because of its low-lying land, Netherfield comes from an old field name that also means 'land that is low-lying'.
Sneinton
This place name has the same origins as Nottingham itself - from Snot, an Anglo-Saxon chieftain. While Nottingham was originally called Snotengaham and later Snottingham, or 'the village of Snot's people', Sneinton was called Snotingatun, or 'the farm of Snot's people'.
Strelley
The 'Stre-' or 'Stra-' prefix comes from the Latin root word 'streat', which has given English words like 'strata' and 'street'. Where it appears as a place name, it means it's near a paved road, more specifically a Roman road.
'Ley- or 'Leia', means a 'forest or woodland clearing', from the Old English 'Leah'. So Strelley means something along the lines of 'the clearing on or near a road or track associated with the Romans'.
Sources: The Place Names of Notts by Heinrich Mutschmann; English Place Names Revealed by Charles Whynne-Hammond; Old Nottingham suburbs: Then and Now by Robert Mellors (via www.nottshistory.org.uk ); Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales by John Marius Wilson; The Penguin Dictionary Of Place Names by Adrian Room; Nottingham Hidden History Team; Arnold History Group.
