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at the period of Domesday. Beside the names already
mentioned we may note Raby, Irby, Pensby, Helsby
Frankby, and Whitby ; Greasby is Gravesberia in Domesday,
but Signeby is named there ; Noctorum
in Domesday Chenoterie, but in the thirteenth century
Knocttyrum, perhaps from the Celtic cnoc, "hill," or
from Hnotar-holm, nut-field, as -holm often becomes
-um in terminations ; Tranmere, Tranmull, crane’s
ness ; Hoylake (lækr) ; Meols (melar) ; Landican, in
Domesday Landechene, possibly Lann-Aedhagain, the
chapel of Athacan, a Gaelic name used by the writers
of Norse runes in the Isle of Man. A similar Celtic
importation may be Poole (Domesday, Pol), for the
Irish Norse must have brought Celtic words to Wirral,
as they did to Cumberland (see Saga-book of Viking
Club, ii., pp. 141-147).
But the chief interest of the names in Wirral is the
evidence they give of the system of Norse settlement
on uninhabited country, precisely the same as in
Iceland. We can see that each head of a household
received a slice of land with a frontage to the fjord of
Mersey or of Dee—in which the most southern creek
is Shotwick, Domesday Sotowiche (Sudrvík?). The
estate reached inland up to the less cultivable high
ground. In each landtake the bóndi fixed his homestead,
neither on the exposed hilltop nor on the
marshy flat. He made his bær, a group of buildings,
in the tún, or homefield, which he manured and
mowed for hay, and surrounded with a garth. Thurstaston,
Thorstein’s tún, must have been a Norse
farm, though Bebbington was a surviving name from
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