| |
Have you ever wondered how the road or street in which you live
got its name? In a lot of cases it is quite obvious: Mill Street, Stoke
Road and Heycroft Way are self explanatory for instance. Having lived
for many years in Court Street, I have often wondered when and how the
street got its name. We shall probably never know for sure but it is
interesting to speculate.
The most likely reason for the name is Court Knoll, Nayland’s scheduled
ancient monument. As most people know, this five acre field surrounded
by a deep ditch was an ancient settlement called Eiland and is believed
to be the original site of Nayland. Occupied by manorial buildings from
at least the thirteenth century the first Manor Court would almost
certainly have been held there. The historian Philip Morant, in 1768,
referred to “the mansion house in a pasture ground called ‘The Court’
but no foundations of any part of it are to be seen except the Chapel.”
On the 1838 Tithe map the field is still called “The Court” but by 1886
the name Court Knoll was appearing on Ordnance Survey maps – I wonder if
it was the Ordnance Survey who thought up this modern name. It probably
took some time for local people to adopt the new name as I remember our
late neighbour, May Wilson, who was born in 1907 and whose family lived
here long before that, always referred to the field as “The Court”.
As the ancient buildings on Court Knoll gradually disappeared the “new”
village began to grow a short distance away from the site. At some stage
village elders perhaps decided to use the old name for the street
running from the heart of the new village to the site of the old. It
would be interesting to be able to pinpoint when this happened. In fact
some street names do originate from medieval times, others did not
become fixed until Victorian times leading to some confusion on old
maps. Court Street’s name has remained constant at least since the
eighteenth century while some others in Nayland have changed several
times. The earliest reference to Court Street I have seen is in a Rate
Roll in 1768.
Another possible
reason for Court Street’s name is Alston Court,
formerly called Grooms until about 1905. The house passed through
several families until the Alston family owned it for about two
centuries from the eighteenth century. According to minutes of the Court
of the Manor of Nayland with Downings, members of the Alston family were
Stewards of the Manor Court during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. It seems quite likely that the Court proceedings would have
been carried on in the home of the Steward and, in fact, the 1892
edition of White’s Directory listed Miss Margaret Alston as living at
“The Court House”. Is it possible then that the street leading up to the
Court (“Alston’s Court”) was named after it?
Until the bypass was built Court Street had been for centuries the main
route from Colchester to Sudbury. As well as being an important highway
I am sure my neighbours would agree with its description in a nineteenth
century newspaper. An advertisement announced that an auction sale was
to be held at the White Hart, Nayland, and the properties to be sold
were to be found in Court Street described as “the preferable part of
the town”! |
|
