[Stones] The Kennet Winterbourne

[littlestone]

trouble is - Winterbourne is more of a 'descriptive' than a name, meaning quite literally 'winter river'...

Good point (being a descriptive name), and by extension you could have the Kennet known as the Kennet by the locals as far upstream as Avebury Trusloe but also know as a winterbourne because it didn't flow continually throughout the year. If the strength of the river dropped away even further over the years (as Pete Reade says it had in his lifetime) the name Kennet may have gradually shifted downstream with it, finally ending up at the Swallowhead where it was given a new lease of life from the spring there. From the Anglo-Saxon period onwards, as the Kennet diminished in strength, perhaps the name Winterbourne came to prevail for the river and villages downstream.

If this is true it could be quite important as it shifts the Kennet upstream past Avebury Trusloe, through Avebury (re: the font there) and possibly even as far as Winterbourne Monkton. The figure in a birthing position on the font in the Church of St Mary Magdalene, plus the most likely etymology for the word Kennet, then begin to make sense.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.stoneslist.org.uk/pipermail/stones/attachments/20070822/9ffbc8f6/attachment.html