What's In A Name?
| NORTH YORKSHIRE |  | | | CLEVELAND | | | | COUNTY DURHAM | |
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Boosbeck – actually, ‘Cow Shed Beck’
THAT the name of the village
of Boosbeck just outside
Skelton involves running
water should come as
no surprise. - beck after all, today
means, as it meant a thousand
years ago, a stream.
But what about that mysterious
Boos? Well, streams and waterfalls,
wells and rivers attract all
kinds of additions when named.
So we have waterways with trees,
for example, England's several
Elmswells, the Well of Elms; we
have waterways recalling animals,
Fangdale Beck, Stream in a Good
Fishing Valley; and we even have
names describing water quality
eg Shirwell, the Clear Spring.
Boosbeck, however, along with
Borrow Beck in Cumbria (the
Stream with a Fort) slips into a
rare and interesting subcategory -
waterways connected with buildings.
Boos, in fact, comes from
the antique English word bos
meaning cow shed, giving us the
rural-sounding Cow Shed Stream.
And when was this particular
Cow Shed built?
As beck is, in origin, a Viking
word, bekkr, as the northerners
would have said, it is unlikely to
predate the tenth-century Viking
settlements in our region, nor can
it be later than the 14th century
when the Cow Shed Stream is finally
recorded in writing as Bosbek.
Whether it was built in 900 or
1300, it stands, in any case, as the
earliest recorded building from
this corner of Cleveland. And
when you think of early Boosbeck,
you might hear the cows
being taken out from the protected
stockades to get their fill of
water in the ringing stream that
breaks earth just to the west of
the modern village, and that rolls
down the hill towards Skelton.
* Simon Young is a historian and
author of AD500.
12:05pm Friday 18th April 2008
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