<\/p>\n\n\n
It has long been a puzzle to me why the stream which runs by Lake Road\/ Silverlake, through Kitnocks Gully and down through Fairthorne Manor to the Hamble, is called Shawford\u2019s Lake. <\/em>It is in fact a perennial stream of very modest dimensions. It\u2019s certainly nothing like a lake.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not the only local stream that\u2019s called a lake<\/em> \u2013 there\u2019s also Ford Lake<\/em> which joins the Hamble at the junction of Wangfield Lane and Maddoxford Lane; and there\u2019s Posbrook Lake<\/em> which joins at the old slipway on Church Lane in Botley. Just before the Hamble joins the Solent, there\u2019s a tributary called Hook Lake<\/em>.<\/p>\n Some while ago, I happened to be perusing the Ordnance Survey map of the Solent. I noticed that many of the tidal channels in Portsmouth, Langstone and Chichester Harbours, are called lakes. <\/em>The main channel of Portsmouth Harbour is fed, for example, by Fareham, Porchester, Spider and Bombketch Lakes. <\/em>Langstone Harbour is similarly blessed with Broad, Russell\u2019s and Sinah Lakes. <\/em><\/p>\n There was obviously a mystery here to be explored.<\/p>\n I consulted my friend David Chun, expert on and author of <\/a> The River Hamble: A History<\/a>.<\/em> It seems that the word lake<\/em> has two different etymological origins. On the one hand, our usual and modern word lake<\/em> comes, via French, from Latin lacus,<\/em> meaning a lake, basin <\/em>or tank<\/em>. There is no suggestion there of a stream<\/em>. However, the now dialect word used for our tributary streams and channels comes from Germanic Anglo Saxon lacu<\/em>, meaning lake, pool<\/em> and also stream. <\/em>These words are of quite separate origin, but, unsurprisingly, they have become, over time, conflated and confused.<\/p>\n Puzzle solved.<\/p>\n However, another puzzle remains. Silverlake<\/em> \u2013 which is not obviously silver nor a lake \u2013 derives its name from Anglo-Saxon Sulaford,<\/em> which means ford of\/at the boggy place.<\/em> It was a ford on the important road from Botley, through Curdridge, to Shedfield and on to Wickham – before it was bridged – or rather, culverted. As Anglo-Saxon gave way to Middle and so to Modern English, Sula<\/em> became silver <\/em>and ford <\/em>was replaced with lake<\/em>, referring to the stream.<\/em> But then how, why and when did it then become Shawford\u2019s<\/em> Lake ?<\/p>\n www.bundellbros.co.uk<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has long been a puzzle to me why the stream which runs by Lake Road\/ Silverlake, through Kitnocks Gully and down through Fairthorne Manor to the Hamble, is called Shawford\u2019s Lake. It is in fact a perennial stream of very modest dimensions. It\u2019s certainly nothing like a lake. But it\u2019s not the only local […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[82,126],"class_list":["post-1497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curdridge-local-history","tag-curdridge","tag-local-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2103,"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497\/revisions\/2103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bundellbros.co.uk\/kevansmiscellany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Kevan Bundell<\/em><\/p>\n