The Fields Have Names

   This post, like many others, might be categorised as a provisional piece, based as it is on a limited amount of information in my possession. I have considered place-names before of course, in past articles such as The Musical Magic of Place-Names. I have also lamented (or moaned) about the dearth of academic studies of place-names in Angus compared with other areas better served in this way. I will doubtless moan about this again in the future, as the mood takes me.

I hope to enlarge this current article when evidence more on the subject eventually arrives. Many parts of Scotland have a substrata of place-names given over to fields, and it is possible that these are understudied. What definitely seems to be true is that there has been no systematic study of field names in Angus. Much of what follows (piecemeal as it is) has been gleaned from Colin Gibson's long-running 'Nature Diary' in the Dundee Courier.

    Landscape Features, Monetary Value

 

   Many, perhaps most, field-names would have been named after prominent local landscape features, which could be as simple as haugh, ley, rig, park, flat, butt, rig. One of these is Whiteleys Park, Airlie. Otherwise, the names could reference other simple features. These names might easily identify specific fields for those called on to work there. Examples of this include Crippleshade (in Carmyllie area, referencing a cripple-gap placed in a wall to allow sheep to pass through), Paterscrede in Lunan (apparently signifying a low, turfy field). The Harey (Arbirlot or Carmyllie) took its designation from a boundary stone. Glutty signified a flood-prone field, as did another field called Fluthers. Merklands obviously relates to price, as does Twenty Pennies. Other fields may have been named after long-gone tenants or owners

                                                       Animal Names

  A few of these can be noted straight off. Teuchat's Wood was another Angus field name, from the south of the county, named of course after the habitat of the lapwing. Fawn's Castle was a field at Drumbertnot, Lunan, and there may be many more field-names of this sort (as well as other topographical features) named after birds and beasts. There is Sheep's Haugh, near Kirriemuir, a name which is almost certainly not unique.

                                             Vanished Buildings

Judging from the field names which have survived, none of them qualify as being genuinely ancient. Some may represent original Gaelic names but none (that I know of) might be called Pictish. Despite that, they are valuable in some instances in showing where there was once a croft, a doocot, or some other ediface perhaps. The College at Kellyfield, Arbirlot, is sometimes cited as the site of an ecclesiastical building associated with Arbroath Abbey or its Celtic predecessor. Kirk Shade at The Gask, Letham, is also reckoned to recall a vanished ecclesiastic building. 

                                               Stranger Names

   Many of the following names many be readily decipherable to some people (and I welcome suggestions), though other meanings may have been lost in the haar of time. There was a field named The Zeppelin which remembered an incident when a German dirigible dropped bombs harmlessly on that plot of land during World War One. I do not know the details behind this incident unfortunately. At Invergowrie, on the Perthshire border, there was Hole Field on Home Farm, named after the alarming and sudden appearance of a great chasm in the ground there. 

A field named Blue Breeks was surmised by Colin Gibson to have originally been called Bare Breeks, a sly commentary on the infertility of that place. There is a field named Paradise in Arbirlot; why it was called this is a mystery. Other unexplained names include The Dourie, The Brogie, The Milner, Moor o' Scare (at Courthill), and the magnificent Gruggle o' the Wad at Carmyllie. The farm of Balcalk at Tealing had the following named fields: Paisline, Crapodale, Hatton Well, Knockmarumple, Tilliehaggleton, Crap Angry. Scroggie and Cannon Den were at Lunan. A field near Forfar was called The Gowpens, signifying two handfuls of corn. The Deil's Knap at Lunan possibly recalls the old Goodman's Crofts, a parcel of land set aside as an insurance policy to the Devil as an insurance for the fertility of the rest of the farm. 

Strathmartine, looking towards the Tay

This post has used (among other sources) material from Colin Gibson's articles in The Courier on Saturday 15 July 1989, Saturday 12 June 1993, Saturday 15 October 1994.