372
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL MAY 11, 1007.
at Kingsgate in Thanet, and other " modern
antiques."
A writer in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1784, part ii. (Nov.) p. 803, says that the manor court of the prebendal manor of Brown's Wood was " held at Hornsey Wood House a tea-house formerly much fre- quented." Browneswood or Brown's Wood is a prebendal manor of St. Paul's, of which the corp is generally supposed to be within the parish of Willesden ; but the writer whom I have quoted says that this is a mistake, and that it is "co-extensive with the east side of the parish of Hornsey (at least in this southern part of it), of which it forms a very considerable part I ap- prehend more than half."
The picturesque old tea-house, of which a sketch is given in Lewis's ' History of Islington,' p. 282, must have been of ancient date as a place of entertainment. It was pulled down in the early part of the last century, and the larger building known to your correspondents was erected on its site, and lasted till 1866. W. F. PRIDEAUX.
The meaning of the name Hornsey or Harnsey is very frequently discussed, and PROF. SKEAT now derives the final syllable from eg, " an island." But with all defer- ence I submit that no one who knows Hornsey could accept that as the etymon. The parish church, the burial-ground, the glebe land, the manor house, and the village street are clustered on the northern slopes of a little hill, and it is a physical impossi- bility for that hill ever to have been sur- rounded by water. For the east side of this particular hill shelves sharply, and with a south-easterly trend, and this is continued, with but very slight undulation, right away to the river Lea, which flows through much lower ground at a distance of about two miles.
I do not think there is a better reason for assuming that Hornsey is identical in ety- mon and formation with, say, Guernsey, than there would be for ussuming that another Middlesex name, sc. Stepney, is formed on the same principle as Alderney. The former place in Domesday Book is " Stibenhede," and about five-and-twenty years ago the " old name " of Stepney, namely, ** Stebonheath," was known to copyholders therein, and may, of course, be still known to such tenants. Why, then, should not Hornsey = Ham's Heath ?
Similarly, it is not at all clear why there should be assumed to be a verbal connexion between Horn-, Ham-, and Harringay. Names of places in -rning are not rare, and
we find Burning-, Jerning-, Warning-, and
Horning itself, among others. Why, then,
should we assume that gemination of r ha&
taken place, driving out the other liquid ?
It is much more probable that rr in Harring-
is the gemination of thr or jr. We find a
Haverstock Hill (a) in Hampstead parish,
and *Hafering would readily become
- Hsefring, Harring-. It is noteworthy, too,
that a few miles from the West-Essex Hornchurch and the Horndons there is a Havering (a), distinguished as " atte Bower." The final syllable of Harringay cannot represent either eg or " heath " (hceft). I have somewhere seen the name given as " Harring-hey," but I cannot quote any authority for this form, which recalls such names as Oxhey . If the form ' ' Harringhey ' ' could be certified, there could not be much doubt about the meaning of -hey, and it is not inapplicable to the site, which is a steep and conspicuous hill. This syllable un- doubtedly represents hege, hcege, " hedge," as used in fortification. Compare the ' Peterborough Chronicle,' wherein, at annal 547, we are told that Ida's stronghold at Bamborough was first " mid hegge betined." The other spelling occurs at annal 1130. These conjectures lead me to suppose that the original form of Harringay may have been " Haeferingahege."
ALFRED ANSCOMBE. 4, Temple Road, Hornsey, N.
The position of Harringay House indi- cated somewhat vaguely by MR. COLYER MARRIOTT at the first reference was, according to the reminiscences of the " oldest inhabitants," on the ground now occupied by the west end of Hewitt Road, half-way up W T ightman Road, a quarter of a mile from Hornsey Station. The dovecote of the mansion stood near the end of Alison Road, the next thoroughfare parallel to Hewitt Road. I am looking forward with interest to MR. MARRIOTT'S long-promised ' History of Hornsey.'
HENRY JOHNSON.
THE MYSTERIES OF THE EMBO BARONETCY (10 S. vii. 246, 315).! have to thank D. M. R. for his most interesting reply, and plead guilty to having overlooked the refer- ence to Robert Home Gordon in ' The House of Gordon.' Since penning the original query I have seen a document which illus- trates symbolically the difficulty of dealing with the Embo family. It is a lease of some property in Jamaica drawn up in favour of the sisters of Robert Home Gordon in 1788, by which time his father Dr. John
