< Previous | Contents | Next >
History of Arnold, Nottinghamshire
ARNOLD is a large village and parish, which may be described as 4 miles north of Nottingham, 10 miles south of Mansfield, and 128 miles from London. It was in the northern division of the Wapentake, or hundred of Broxtowe, and was part of the Forest of Sherwood. It is in the Rushcliffe division of Nottinghamshire for Parliamentary purposes; in the Basford Union for Poor Law administration; the Petty Sessional division and County Court of Nottingham; the rural deanery of Gedling; the archdeaconry of Nottingham; and Diocese of Southwell. For the County Council the eastern side of the parish returns one member, and the western side, along with Bestwood and Papplewick, another. It is governed by an Urban District Council of 16 members, the chairman of which is a magistrate during his term of office. For ecclesiastical purposes the parish is divided by a line running chiefly east and west, the southern part belonging to St. Paul's, Daybrook.
For purposes of communication the old North Road (the King's road from London to York, via Nottingham) enters the parish 21/2 miles from the city market place, and leaves it at about 7 miles, as does also the Nottingham and Mansfield main road passing through Daybrook and Redhill. The Plains road sweeps round the eastern side. The Great Northern Railway (Nottingham and Derbyshire branches) has a station at Daybrook, at which 45 trains stop daily. Omnibuses run to and fro many times daily. A motor car plies for hire. The Post Office has three deliveries, and is a telegraphic and telephonic centre, and money order office and savings bank. There is a Registrar of Births and Deaths. There are ten Trustees of Parochial charities and 15 managers of six elementary schools. There is a resident police sergeant, and eight constables. The water and gas services are controlled by the Nottingham Corporation, and the sewage is dealt with by that body. There is a branch of the London City and Midland Bank. There are two Parish Churches and nine Chapels. The principal occupations are, in addition to agriculture, the manufacture of hosiery and lace, lace dressing and bleaching, laundries, a brewery, etc. Many miners reside in but work outside the parish. Numerous Nottingham business people reside at Arnold.
The name Arnold—Its Meaning.
The history of place-names, full of interest, is also full of difficulties for the inquirer, as the original forms of words cannot always be discovered. Just as coins passing current through the hands of men are gradually worn away till effigy and legend become indecipherable, if not actually invisible, so words handed down by the mouths of many generations and through varying dialects often undergo very serious obscuring changes, both vocal and consonantal.
Arnold appears in Domesday Book as Ernehale. It was probably pronounced Arnehale even then. For the interchange of ar and er to express the same sound we may compare such place-names as Derby, Berkshire, and Herts.; such personal names as Hervey; common names like clerk; and the words marvel and marvellous, derived from the French merveille, and actually written in some writers, e.g. Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser, as mervaile and mervaillous. We may quote from Chaucer, Prologue to Canterbury Tales:
For many a man so hard is of his herte, He may not wepe though him sore smerte.
Nonne Priest his Tale:
So were they fered for berking of the dogges.
Arnold has been interpreted to mean 'eagle-slope,' erne-heald or holt. But this interpretation involves several difficulties.
(1) What evidence is there that the eagle, which usually nests in rocky heights among the mountains or by the sea, was at any time so frequent a visitor to an inland place like Arnold as to give a name to the place? It is true that, according to the list of Notts. Fauna given in the Victoria County History, the white-tailed eagle has at times been seen in this neighbourhood, and may possibly have been oftener seen when the Forest round Arnold supplied a greater abundance of wild life for food. But the visits of the bird must have been very frequent and specially noticed, in order to suggest a local name.
(2) How came the 'd' to have disappeared in the time of Domesday and then to reappear in the 13th century? It may be suggested that the 'd' came in through the Latinizing of the name into Arnallus, to get over the difficulty of pronunciation, the '1' being hardened into 'd.' That '1' gives difficulty may be seen from the appending of 's' to such names as Russells (=Russell); from words like 'howd,' 'towd'=hold, told; from Huckna, Watna, Arna, Arnot; Edowlton, Edowton (=Edwalton). In 'Place-names of Lancashire and Berkshire,' by W. W. Skeat and others, it is said "the hale (=corner) in Bracknell is one of the rarer topographical elements in the country's names." Is it possible then that erne= hern, and that the name Erne-hale=heron's corner, a part of the forest where herons were specially abundant or most frequently found? We may compare Hucknall=oak corner, Nuttall=nut corner? The assumption is that these names were given to particular parts of the forest in which many specimens of certain trees or animals were found.
In an Inquisition taken before the Sheriff of Nottingham 28 Edw. I, 1291, Ralph de Arnehale or Harnehale, is the person whose possessions are attested. 'H' must therefore sometimes have been pronounced in the word. For hern=heron we may, perhaps, compare Herne Hill, and Tennyson writes "I come from haunts of coot and hern." Some scribe, misunderstanding the second syllable, may have written the word Erne-holt, from which the transition to Arnold is easy.
This suggestion is only tentatively put forth in the absence of any other satisfactory explanation.
Si quid nevisti rectius istis, Candidas imperii.
Geology.
I.
Some Geologists tell us that vast ages ago the surface of the earth where Arnold now stands was 400 to 500 yards—1200 to 1500 feet—or more lower than it is now, and that the earth has been raised, or filled up to the height it now is. The vegetation was then wild, rank, and of rapid growth, for the atmosphere was warm and moist, and what we now call Arnold was partly in and partly out of the water, the vegetation, such as ferns and mosses, becoming of great thickness, for it is said that ten feet of peat compressed would form one foot of coal. After a vast period the whole was overwhelmed with mud and deposit, so that gases were generated, and acted chemically, and the great cake of vegetation buried and pressed together became what we now call hard coal. Thirty to forty times the process was repeated, vegetation grew for a time and again and again was overwhelmed with deposits of black shale, ironstone, fireclay, bind, sand, grit, etc., which we call the coal measures. Ages afterward the water came and covered the whole district, and during succeeding ages deposited, where Arnold now stands, a depth of more than two hundred feet of sand, deepening more eastwardly in the county to seven hundred and fifty feet, leaving space between each of the particles of sand to hold water, and surrounding the whole deposit in such form that it acted like an underground reservoir, holding an almost unlimited supply of the best water in England.
When the water—possibly huge rivers and vast inland lakes— had deposited the sand, there came floods which carried on to the top of the sand a mixture of sand and clay, sometimes alternating, so that, as the Railway tunnel shews, about sixty feet of Water Stones rest on the Bunter Sandstone. Between the Railway tunnel and Daybrook the line cuts through twenty feet of Pebble beds, while on the Forest near Cockliffe Hill are deposited millions of tons of gravel.
"The Victoria History of Notts." says: "The gravel from the west is a high level gravel. The longest and most southerly spot at which indications of it have been met with is on the hills to the west of Arnold, where comparatively large boulders of carboniferous limestone and volcanic rocks lie on the surface of the Bunter Pebble Beds, at a height of 300 feet."—p. 33, vol. 1.
Marl or clay, with pale coloured sandstone called skerry, was driven and piled on the Red Hill, Dorket Head and the Plains.
Somewhere in the vast past there perhaps came a mighty convulsion of Nature in which the rocks and hills in Derbyshire, called the Pennine chain, of vastly older formation than anything we have locally, were bodily raised, and the whole district west of us was lifted so that the deposits in the Arnold formation dip to the east.
THE ICE AGE.
An age of intense cold followed, cold as "Greenland's icy mountains," and millions of tons of ice covered the land, and descending deepened the valley as it forced its way from the hills.
When the ice age passed away floods tore up the land in many places, and much of the clay that had been deposited in Arnold was probably washed down the valley we call Daybrook, or down the hill towards Woodborough, and went down the Trent Valley to help to form Lincolnshire.
WILD BEASTS.
When the wild beasts came and went no man exactly knows, but there is little doubt that the lion, the grizzly bear, the hyena, the wolf, and other wild animals ranged the district.
Tens of thousands of years have passed and gone since some of the transactions we have been considering occurred. Wind and storm, rain and snow, frost and thaw, solar heat, operated in succession on the surface of the land; vegetation grew and decayed, followed by new growths; worms penetrated the soil, ventilating it, and casting it up for further deposits and growths, until at length the land was prepared and ready for man's use, and man came to the district we now call Arnold.
It was a beautiful spot he came to. Protected on the east and north by big hills, and slightly shaded on the west, it received all the benefit of a southern sun. Eight or more springs of beautiful water rose and flowed from points where the water stones have a solid bed underneath them, or where the marl overlaps the sandstone. The soil presented pleasing varieties, ranging from light sand to strong clay, with intermediate stages' of pliable mould, adapted to the growth of oaks and other timber; of fruit trees; of wheat and barley, vegetables and flowers; of grass pastures by running streams, and other provisions for man and beast, while the birds sheltered and sang in its woods and valleys.
The foregoing must be taken as an effort to read Nature's book of Arnold. It may be it has been wrongly read. Nature is a book of marvels. We know little of it, and the more we know the more we admire the marvels, and the more marvels we see to admire. So much is this the case that full knowledge would make us feel like Newton, that we are as children picking up pebbles with the great sea before us unexplored.
MAN ARRIVES.
When man first appeared in Arnold, as we now call it, his troubles would probably be with wild beasts. Of this, however, there is no record, and the first record we have is of man's struggles with his fellow man. The site of the ancient camp on Cockpit Hill, formerly called Holly Hill or Holy Hill, dominating the road to the north, on a height more than 500 feet above sea level at a point where three ridgeways met, which formerly could be traced for a length of 1,251 feet by 720 feet, and which was one of a series of defensive earthworks in Woodborough, Oxton, and adjacent parishes, tells of danger and insecurity, and that the early inhabitants had to stand and fight for their lives and property. This may possibly be placed at the Romano-British period. There are, or used to be, some traces of earthworks or entrenchments between Killisick Lane and Spout Lane.
II.—THE SOUTHERN PART OF ARNOLD.—THE KEUPER.
There is no visible evidence of the Strata above the Keuper, though, no doubt, the contour of the Arnold hills and valleys was formed by the great Ice Age, and to a slight extent by rain, wind and frost afterwards, still going on. The Keuper proper lies along the Mapperley Plains and round the Dorket Head to Cockpit Hill, but does not extend far down the slopes towards the west, when the waterstones, which lie under it, begin and end on the east side of the Front Street. Red Hill ridge is a continuation of the waterstones from the lower slopes of Mapperley Plains. There are various small hills, as Derry Mount, Red Hill Lane, and the Red Hill side of the Bestwood boundary where the waterstones obtain. It may be here mentioned that in former times the Arnold people used water from the natural springs of the waterstones in the district mentioned, and several of them are still running. Also many private wells were sunk in the waterstones, but there are only a very few now in use where the Nottingham water main does not pass through these districts.
THE BUNTER.
By the kindness of Mr. Croucher, of the Home Brewery Co., Daybrook, I am enabled to give the depth of each stratum forming the Bunter beds—from their well-sinking operations:—
|
Feet. |
Inches |
Sand and Waterstones |
61 |
0 |
Grey Sandstone with pebbles |
11 |
0 |
Grey Sandstone |
32 |
0 |
Red Marl |
1 |
0 |
Light Red Sandstone |
41 |
0 |
Dark Red Sandstone |
90 |
0 |
Grey Sandstone with small pebbles |
1 |
6 |
Light Red Sandstone |
20 |
6 |
Red Sandy Marl |
37 |
0 |
*Red Marl |
3 |
6 |
Total Depth |
298 |
6 |
*This is the Peruvian Marl; but the lower Mottled Sandstone which precedes this at Bestwood Colliery has apparently run out here.
COAL MEASURES.
The next in importance to the water-bearing strata are the Coal Measures. In the parish of Bestwood, on the west side of Arnold, the top hard is being worked. There are four workable seams above this, including the high hazle or clowne coal. At Gedling Colliery on the east side both the high hazle and the top hard are being worked. The measures dip towards the south-east with an inclination of about two degrees, and from Bestwood to Gedling thin out considerably, according to the following table:—
|
Bestwood |
Gedl |
ing |
|
|
feet |
inches |
feet |
inches |
Depth from surface of the High Hazle |
623 |
0 |
1112 |
0 |
Thickness of seam at boring |
4 |
3 |
3 |
9 |
Depth from surface of the Top Hard |
1241 |
0 |
1377 |
0 |
Thickness of seam at boring |
6 |
8 |
2 |
11 |
By the above it will be seen that the coal measures in Arnold hold a middle point in depth and thickness. The lower beds have not yet been proved; but it is quite possible that other well-known seams exist.
THE DAY-BROOK.
This, the only important stream in Arnold, takes its rise in the North Howbeck fields, and drains the whole of the spring and rainwater from the southern watershed of the parish. Its widest part is at Daybrook bridge where it is about eight feet in width in winter, but less in summer.
< Previous | Contents | Next >
Editorial Note.
Some of the more recent school of geologists incline to the opinion that the processes by which our country assumed its present form were more gradual and less catastrophic than was once supposed. Both the melting of the ice and the upheaval of the hills they think probably took place slowly, and as the upheaval was perhaps balanced by simultaneous wearing away, the hills may never have been much higher than they are now. The periods of the appearance and extinction of the animal monsters seem to be at least approximately and relatively known. "The actual time of main geological movement seems to have been after the coal measures were formed, and before the sand was laid down; minor movements continued for a while afterwards; hence the gentle dip of sand and clay."