Pendeford - Name and Origins

Name and Origins

The first known written recording of the place name 'Pendeford', was in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it was recorded with the same spelling as today - a rarity for place names. The name is thought by many toponymists to mean 'Penda's Ford', possibly a crossing over the nearby River Penk named after the Anglo-Saxon King, Penda of Mercia who reigned in Mercia from the year 626. Despite the origin of the name not being set in stone, the recording of the place name in the Domesday book tells us that Pendeford was in existence at the time of the Norman conquest, and that at the time, Pendeford was held by two Englishmen, Ulstan and Godwin. After the conquest, the land was confiscated and given to a Norman knight called William Fitz-Ansculf, as a reward for serving William the Conqueror.

At this point in time, Pendeford would have been little more than a few scattered buildings amongst woodland, bordered on its eastern side by a lake known in more recent times as Alleycroft Lake (the lake no longer exists, having been drained upon the construction of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal during the 18th century, though a marshy area remains on the site of the new I54 project to the north of Wobaston Road). Pendeford lay near the farthest south-west reaches of Cannock forest, which was much larger than today in early medieval times.

Read more about this topic:  Pendeford

Famous quotes containing the words name and and/or origins:

    Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore than name. Are they all alike. I think so.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.
    W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)