BoAr: Gallery: BAEM: The Heg

http://boar.org.uk/ghiwxs7BAEM(pic5b.htm Latest edit 23 May 2008.

Text, page and picture ©R.J.PENHEY 2008.

The Bourne Archive Gallery

The Heg at Dyke, from the Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825.

This is a detail, covering the area of the Heg, south of Dyke, taken from the Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825.

The Heg is a strip-shaped plot of land bounded by outer limits of the raised lateral banks of the Car Dyke, which perhaps as a result of the plot’s existence, have been conserved particularly well here. The Exeter Estate Book gives its area as 6 acres, 2 roods, 31 perches (2.7170 ha) and confirms that its owner was Henry Bott, copyhold of the Manor of Bourne. It does not give the plot’s name on the relevant plan but it is included in the form ‘The Hegg’, in the EEB list of premises. There is a similar strip plot along the Car Dyke north of Dyke but this belonged to neither the Exeter Estate nor the Bourne Abbots Estate. In the 1820s, it was held, apparently freehold, by John Brittain so, while the records of both the big estates record his ownership, neither names the plot.

It seems possible that the names Car and Heg have the same meaning but with origins in the Brythonic and Germanic language families respectively. Compare the modern Welsh caer, lle caeëdig and cae or the English hedge, respectively. Each of these words embraces the concept of an enclosing boundary (Geiriadur Newydd & OED). Two of the three Anglo-Saxon words for ‘hedge’, given by Pollington are haga and hega but his words for concepts such as ‘enclosure’, ‘boundary’ and ‘fencing’ are distinctly different. The application of the car and heg names to the archaeological feature, the Car Dyke implies that their use is old: dating from a time when the dyke’s significance as a boundary of a Roman imperial estate in The Fens was possibly still remembered. That this part of it serves also as a catchwater drain seems to have been regarded as of lesser significance when names were allocated.

This district underwent considerable Danish influence under the Danelaw. The modern Danish word for fence is hegn. When heg is pronounced in the Danish manner, it sounds as hey, very close to the French Haie. La Haie (the hedge or enclosure: compare La Haie Sainte at Waterloo) is the French version of the Dutch s’Gravenhage. This in turn, means ‘the count’s park’. A park is an enclosure: compare Gobbold’s Park, a pre-eighteenth century enclosure in Bourne Fen, or the general term, ‘deer park’. s’Gravenhage is known in English as ‘The Hague’. The Swedish inhägnad means ‘enclosure’. It is therefore possible to see that the element ‘heg’ is widely associated with the concept of enclosure. Compare also the job description of the hayward: an officer of a manor having charge of the fences and enclosures. (OED) See also OED entries for Hag n.² and Haw n.¹. (RJP3) . Indeed, the lands adjacent to the east were known as Dyke Haws. Their small size and irregular shapes are consistent with their having been early enclosures.

Given the correctness of the enclosure line of argument as an explanation of the Car and Heg names, the Brythonic name can hardly refer to anything much later than the Roman use of the dyke. On the other hand, the use of ‘heg’ may refer either to a translation of ‘car’ by incommers, or to the dyke’s use under William Rufus, or Henry I, as the western boundary of his royal forest. See a map of Kesteven Forest and a rough description of the forest’s boundaries.

For a general view of Dyke, see BAEM 5

For a detail of the Main Street area, see BAEM 5a

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