Scandinavian-Britain

CHESHIRE AND LANCASHIREIQ5usually is associated with ancient sloping pasture-land.In Wallasey there are fields called thwaites, testifying tothe Norse origin of the agricultural system at the timewhen these names were given. The hblmr, kjarr(carr) and myrr served, before the days of drainedland, as they do in Iceland now, forpasturing largercattle; lambs and calves were herded on the higherground. The name Calday (Domesday Calders) nearThurstaston, perhaps meant "calf-dales," as Calgarthat Windermere was anciently Calv-garth, and Calderin Caithness was Kalfadalsa. Sheep were sent up themoor by the Rake (from reka, to drive), and we findthe name at Eastham, as well as in Scotland andnorth England. In summer the cattle were pasturedon the moor, and the dairymaids had their sseters orshielings, which when the land became more cut upinto smaller holdings became independent farms;hence the names containing satter and seat in theLake District, sometimes dropping the last consonantand producing Seathwaite, Seascale. In Wirral, Seacombeappears to represent the hvammr or " combeof the seat," or saeter. Other words to express thesame practice are of the type of Summerhill and Sellafield,found in the north of England, and also theborrowed Gaelic airidh or ergh tfound in the Orkneysand Hebrides, as well as throughout Northumbria andGalloway in various forms. Here in Wirral we find itas Arrow, parallel with the same name at Coniston, andperhaps giving us the sater of the Gallgael Norsemanwho had his bar at Thurstaston.In the middle of the peninsula where the moorland