Five questions about rude place names – Quick Quiz answers
We asked you to identify the county and town where you’d find five place names in Britain. Here come the answers!
Where would you find:
- Minge Lane?
Upton-upon-Severn, in Worcestershire. (Staying in Worcestershire we could have had Cockshot Road in nearby Great Malvern, or the village of Wyre Piddle— home to the Wyre Piddle Brewery and its range of ales including Piddle in the Hole, Piddle in the Snow, Piddle in the Wind and Piddle in the Dark.) - Slack Bottom?
Hebden Bridge, in West Yorkshire. Slack Bottom is actually a hamlet just outside the village of Heptonstall, which in turn is just outside Hebden Bridge. - Shitterton?
Another hamlet, this one’s just outside Bere Regis in central Dorset. It used to have a conventional name sign, but now has a 1½-ton lump of Purbeck stone after Purbeck District Council got fed up with repeated thefts of the sign. - Pratt’s Bottom?
The village of Pratt’s Bottom is near the town of Orpington, in the London Borough of Bromley in Greater London. Before 1965 it was part of Kent; now it’s just outside it. The nearest village across the county boundary is called Badgers Mount, which would make for an interesting itinerary if you were travelling from Kent into London. - Twatt?
This is a trick question as there are actually two Twatts! Both of them are hamlets. One is on the Mainland island of Orkney; the other is on the Mainland island of Shetland. The name comes from the Old Norse þveit, meaning “small parcel of land”.
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One Response to “Five questions about rude place names – Quick Quiz answers”
For Q5, I should probably have pointed out that “Orkney” and “Shetland” are the Post Towns for their respective archipelagos. But we’d let you off with Kirkwall and Lerwick respectively.
As for þveit, it’s also the root of the common northern English place name suffix -thwaite.