This all started with an idle stroll onto a local hill, and the discovery of a green lane. I decided to photograph the lane in different light conditions throughout the year, but the sunset shots through the roots of the beech hedge are the ones that most appeal. And then I decided to take a historical wander, in a literal and metaphorical sense, and see where I ended up.
There is so much you could investigate that it is a little hard to begin, but I start by asking “what’s in a name?” What does Bowbier mean? Where does the name come from?
From various ancestry sites, I find out that Boobyer / Boobbyer / Boobier / Bowbier are variant spellings and the name was limited to an area of the Devon/ Somerset border until industrialisation and greater mobility of the population. If I get involved in family research there are many tracks I could take. I’m sort of fascinated by the idea put forward by some that the surname derived from the bird called a booby, which then leads me to wonder why so much of our sexual language is related to birds. However, I decide this is a digression too far and I wander back to whichever side path I had just wandered off.
I hook back to a local history website and see from their map that Bowbier has another spelling, although it’s unclear what. So I go to an older map than the OS map – to the tithes. A tithe map of Bampton is available here. This opens up an entire new field of research. The digitised tithe maps are an amazing source and I am now able to see who owned the hill and surrounding land in the early 1840s, when parishes were mapped to assess the tithe payable in cash to the parish church for the support of the church and its clergy.
Then as now, the lower track I walk is defined. The ridge track consists of faint dotted lines on “Bowber” Hill. And I realise I need to know more about Devon dialect to know about the variant spellings. Bampton was surveyed in 1842 so the spelling was changed and formalised, or perhaps just fixed, by the later OS maps. For the tithes, Bampton was surveyed by E. Browne who also surveyed the Devon parishes of Brampford Speke, Christow and Newton St Cyres. In border country such as this, I also need at some point to check what was going on in Somerset. But E. Browne is not a good name to research. Not something I can profitably dig further for, although if I’m lucky, he or she may emerge again. There is something in the local pronunciation that renders Bowber and Bowbier similar enough. But I do not know as yet, and may never know, how local Browne was and why they used the spelling they did.
Going through the information with the tithe map, and again being distinctly side-tracked, I notice something that piques my interest. There is a “Druid’s Hayne” near Bampton. No particular offence to anyone but I do not associate the solidly Tory-voting area of mid-Devon with druids. It just doesn’t seem an easy mix. But this isn’t something to bypass. If there were druids on that hill, I want to know. And this is where the local history site comes up trumps. There was an ancient order of druids in Bampton – another trail to which to return.
Back to the name. I know, or have noticed over time, that “beer” and variant spellings are common suffixes to Devon names. Nottingham university has a key to English place names, but annoyingly it crashed, repeatedly, and I’m starting to wish I had a book. It seems Nottingham’s is an old project and the site is not maintained.
A history of English place names from a a heraldry site brings more luck. Apparently “Compound names are composed of an adjectival element and a habitative or topographic element. These compound names make up the majority of place names in England.” So it may be that this is what I’m dealing with.
Devon does have a village called simply “Bow”, around 25 miles from Bowbier. Curiously, and possibly coincidentally, Bow is adjacent to the hamlet of Nymet Tracey. Nymet means “sacred grove” and has strong Druidical and Pagan associations. According to Oxford Reference “beare” in its variant spellings means “grove” or “wood” which makes sense given that the wood is ancient. The same website informs me that Bow was the place by the arched bridge.
So, this is where I’ve got to in wandering the lanes. It seems likely that Bowbier is just the grove near the bridge, although I can’t help but think that the first part of the name refers to the prominent bow in the Exe that the hill overlooks. It’s possible the place gave rise to a local family name, which then spread. I can track who owned the land and somewhere in here there are some druids. So it seems entirely appropriate that before I knew that, I’d decided to photograph the spot at sunset on full moon nights.
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