Wiltshire's Strange Place Names

The county of Wiltshire is famous for unusual ancient sites such as the standing stones at Avebury and Stonehenge, and the man-made mound of Silbury Hill. It also has its fair share of places with strange and amusing names. Blue Vein, Knockdown and Bleet are just a few.

 

- Dene Bebbington

The origins of the county date back to the Wilsaetes tribe and it’s believed that the shire existed in the 8th century. Wiltunscir was its name by the 9th century. Later it became known as Wiltonshire, after the county town of Wilton, until the 11th century.

 

A person from Wiltshire may be called a Wiltshirite, but another nickname for natives is Moonrakers. According to folklore smugglers used to hide barrels of alcohol from excise officers in a village pond. The smugglers would rake the surface to make it difficult to see the underwater barrels while they’d claim to the excise men that they were raking a round cheese in the water. In reality it was the moon’s reflection rather than a submerged cheese. The excise men perhaps thought the locals were simpletons.

Upper Upham is a hamlet lying a few miles from Marlborough, and in the 16th century it was made up of about six houses. The landed gentry family Goddard — Swindon’s lords of the manor — built Upper Upham House in 1599 which was the family home for several centuries.

This Grade II-listed country house is the main historic remnant of the hamlet which continues as a small community with some modern houses. The surname of Upham means someone from Upham in Hampshire, Devon or Wiltshire.

In contrast, the nearby hamlet of Snap no longer exists despite having been a settlement for several centuries. Unlike the other abandoned village of Imber in the county, there are no derelict buildings. Indeed, the landscape bears no obvious record of a community at Snap having existed. By 1909 only two residents remained, and army training during the First World War destroyed most of the houses.