Arcadia Discussion Zone

Now you're talking...sounds very similar to what we've been discussing regarding the origins of Paris and the sacred site on the Lendit...the distances from Lutèce, the limit of the oppidum Mont Martre, the mound of "Montjoie" & St Denis....and the cephalophores.

One of my posts above showed the similarity between the "montjoies" built on this route and the Charing cross you are discussing.

I would be interested in any distances between Bran's head & the cathedral.

In recent years the place-name elements 'toot' and 'tut' have been looked at by a number of investigators. The general consensus is that it denotes a 'a hill of observation', a look-out place. The word derives from the Old English totian, 'to peep, look out, spy', or Middle English toten, 'to project, stick out'. But 'to tote' in Middle English is 'to watch, to look out'. The word has also evolved into modern English 'tout', which (until recently, at least) meant a spy or lookout man.

Wyckliffe, in his translation of the Bible, applies the word 'tot' to the reference to Mount Zion in Samuel ii 7-9 and in Isaiah xxi b, 'Up on the toothil of the Lord I am stondethe . . .', which the King James version renders 'watchtower'.

It would seem that at least some of these toot hills were articifical mounds, perhaps surmounted by watch towers. This links to a whole group of Germanic words which can be traced back to the Old High German word tutta or tuta, meaning 'nipple'. In Old Norse tuta extends its meaning to 'a teat-like prominence'. Medieval Dutch tote means 'apex, point' (giving the modern Dutch tuit, 'spout or nozzle'). Likewise, modern German tute means a 'cone-shaped container' (although the sense has widened in recent years to include the ubiquitous carrier bags!).

http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/Toothill.htm

Tot Hill, Westminster
Arguably the most auspicious toot hill is the one at Westminster, London. Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament are the most-recent of a succession of palaces and churches which date back to the post-Roman period. Indeed, the first church here, dating to the seventh century, may have taken advantage of the copious remains of Roman buildings. The locality was known for many centuries as Thorney Island, being an area of relatively solid ground amid the marshes bordering the Thames. Additionally, there was an artifical mound, known as Tot Hill.
Tot Hill still stood in Queen Elizabth I's time, as Nordon, the topographer of Westminster, wrote 'Tootehill Street, lying in the west part of the city, takes the name of a hill near it which is called Toote Hill, in the great field near the street.' Toot Hill is indeed shown on a 1746 map by Rocques by a bend in Horseferry Road roughley where Regency Palace now stands (TQ 298795). The name survived in Tothill Fields, the old tournament ground now part of of the playing field for Westminster School in Vincent Square, and Tothill Street, which aligns with the northern transcept of Westminster Abbey. Alfred Watkins discovered and described a pair of leys, one running down the middle of Tothill Street, although his claims that the two alignments crossed at Tot Hill does not match Rocques' map, although there is no certainty that his cartography was reliable.

Jeff Saward has recorded that there was a maze on Tot Hill, which was recorded as restored in 1672 and traditionally a site for various games of skill and agility, and a so-called Troy Game (played every Sunday in Lent by knights on horseback) may be first recorded in the sixth century.

How do you work that one out? London Stone was the place where all distances were measured from, as mentioned by Shakespeare. It represented the centre of London, situated as it was conveniently at a very central spot within the old walled city. About a mile and a half from where Charing Cross was later placed, 3/4 of a mile outside the city walls. Hardly a landmark to measure distances from.

London Stone is mentioned by Stowe as being in the Cannon Street location before the Norman Conquest, where it is mentioned in a document from the time of King Aethelstan.

Stow says"...pitched upright is a great stone called London Stone, fixed in the ground very deep, fastened with bars of iron, and otherwise so strongly set, that if carts do run against it through negligence, the wheels be broken and the stone itself unshaken."

It was certainly an ancient place of assembly and a place where you could not be arrested for free speech (in common with the stone in Parliament Hill fields), which is why the peasants' revolt assembled here in June of 1381.

There is a theory that before the Greek Temple where St Pauls now stands was a stone circle and that London Stone was an outlying stone connected with it. The stone originally stood on a direct line from St Pauls to the ancient mound where Bran's head was buried and where the tower of London now resides. It was originally opposite St Swithin's Church, half projecting out into the road.

The stone was located in the Chinese Bank at Charing Cross it was moved back to its original position at Cannon Street.

Not as far as anyone is aware.

Stowe described London Stone as being "very tall" in 1598.

By 1671 the "remayning parte" was being used by a guild "to smash shoddy spectacles with a hammer". So at some point it had possibly been broken and the remnant provided a convenient table.

The stone was removed in 1742 to the wall of the Wren church named after it, St Swithin, London-Stone. At this time it was broken from its root in the ground (and for all we know the original stump may still be in the ground under Cannon Street).

It was removed in 1798 but due to public protest was replaced in the south wall of the church, 35 feet from its original position.

In 1869 iron railings were added "For more careful protection and transmission to future ages".

St Swithin was bombed in WWII around 1940/41. The stone was housed in the Guildhall Museum until it was eventually relocated to the wall of a building constructed on the site of the demolished church in Cannon Street. This was the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation in Cannon Street, not Charing Cross.

On 10 May, 2002, the Planning Department of the Corporation of London received an application to relocate the Stone to the retail frontage of a proposed new building on the same site. This application was approved on 23 July, 2002.

The Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation building was finally torn down around 2006 and the sad remnant of the stone sited in a sports shop.

Because the Romans didn't build the roads, they merely improved and renamed them.

Told you so... And "Chere Reine" isn't right either, in all likelihood.

The Cross was erected circa 1291-4.

In 1236, "Gilbert, the Marshal of England, Earl of Pembroke" dated a charter from "London, in the house of the hospital of Runchivalle." It had probably been formed only a year or two before, for there is no suggestion of its existence in Henry III's confirmation in 1232 of the grant by William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, of certain houses and curtilages at Charing to the Augustinian house of St. Mary at Roncevaux in the Pyrenees.

I guess we need to dig out William Marshal's actual grant statement to confirm whether the name Charyn or Charing existed prior to the dear Queen Eleanor's demise. The statement certainly seems to suggest there were already houses and curtilages (enclosed spaces without roofs) at that location.

Update; Ms Armstrong has written back and told me that the derivation of the name "Charing" may be a legend lost to time. She also told me the time period in question (c.1290), is beyond her own field of expertise (1066- 1245). I will thank her for her response, and still wonder if the village of "Charing" existed under that or a derivation of that name prior to 1290.
...Bill

I thought we were looking for a specific document of William Marshal's dated between 1232 and 1236, within her time period. I thought she might have been able to say where that document can be found, as she's written Marshal's biog.

hmm...everything else aside...these Eleanor Crosses look exactly like les "Montjoies" that were constructed at the end of the XII c. along the route that led to St Denis....and demolished in 1793.

Les sept Montjoies réparties le long de la route de Notre Dame de Paris à la Basilique de Saint-Denis, sont des croix, édicules hexagonaux, élevés le long de l’Estrée, aux endroits où Philippe III le Hardi, portant le corps de son père saint Louis, le 12 mai 1271, arrête le convoi pour se reposer. Par la suite, tous les cortèges funèbres royaux s’arrêtent aux Montjoies de Saint-Denis. Ces édicules hexagonaux portaient sur trois côtés, trois niches contenant trois statues de rois, tournées vers la route et trois niches aveugles vers les champs. Ils seront détruits sous la révolution. On peut savoir à quoi ils pouvaient ressembler, en se reportant aux croix édifiées par Edouard 1er d’Angleterre, sur le modèle même des Montjoies parisiennes, à la même époque, pour rendre hommage à sa femme Eléonore, morte à Lincoln: Il transporta le cercueil d’Eléonore, en procession, à la manière de celle de saint-Louis, de Lincoln à la cathédrale de Westminster à Londres, avec 12 arrêts, sur les lieux de certains desquels se dressent encore ces croix-montjoies dont les statues représentent Eléonore.

It says that Anglo Saxon place names ending in '...ing' usually denote a patronymic, ie the place takes its name from a family. Usually this would be the genitive singular, often followed by ...ton, tun or ham. Sometimes the '..ing' might refer to a topographic feature, as in Bromley, Bromleagings.

Place names in late charters ending in '..ing' are more probably nominative plurals. For instance a charter for Charing in Kent gives us the Anglo Saxon Cherringes - the place where the Chers live.

Although Wikipedia is not always correct, far from it. Your entry may well be the correct derivation, who knows?

I don't believe it is

Plenty of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary has been presented. Piling on more evidence probably won't make you discard a "cherished" notion. Freud, BTW, is a piss-poor reference on the subject matter, dontcha think? Freud would be a far more credible expert in an exploration of your need for Charing to mean "chere Reine".

Such evidence was posted and deemed "suspect" by our micmac expert.