White Moss. With this word may be compared the surname Whitmarsh. White Moss is so named from the light-brown colour of the grass which grows there, and which is in contrast with the dark green and purple of the heath surrounding it. I have not examined the ground, but it seems to me bot improbable that a spring of water bubbling up in this 'white' moor—and a spring which, moreover, is the very source of the Sheath—might properly have been called 'white well.' Whitelow and White Yard, as will be seen in the glossary, are places in Dore, and there is a little brook which flows from Beauchief Abbey into the Sheath which in the sixteenth century is called the Sheene or Sheynw.[1] Quintinewell, as will be seen in the glossary, is the old name of a little valley now known by the singular and corrupt name of Twentywell Sick. Quintinewell would be the same word as Whintinewell, just as Quytekar and Whitekar (white acre) are the same word. Although Whintinewell nearly resembles hwitan wylle, whitanwell, I have in the glossary attempted a derivation of this word from a personal name. Th language of the Chronicle is very obscure, and it is impossible to say whether 'hwitan wylles geat' refers to a place in Dore or not.
The fact that the chronicler has referred thus minutely to this obscure hamlet is a proof that the borderland between these two ancient kingdoms was once regarded with a watchful and jealous eye. Thee district called Hallamshire must once have been the most extreme outpost of Northumbria, and the line of demarcation must have been as clear, and as stoutly defended, as the Scottish borders. Further to the east, on the Northumbrian side of the Sheath, were the castle of Sheffield and the Roman station of Templeborough. As regards the castle of Sheffield, we know that Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland, son of Siward the Dane, had a 'hall' (aula) there when the Domesday Book was made, and I think we must understand by this word the castle of a noble. Knowing as we do that the river now called Sheaf is a corrupt form of the word sheth or shed, as we see it in water-shed, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that Sheffield is the field of the Sheth, the place of division.
- ↑ Pegge's Beauchief Abbey, p. 39.
