I was quite interested in a layout advertised at an exhibition of a station that was on my list of inspirational places. I was very disappointed to find it was a freelance layout but named after a real station.
This set me thinking about what I should call my own
freelance layout. The home part of the layout, which was the main line station,
was safe as it wasn’t leaving the garage but the branch line station I was
building for exhibition could fall into this trap. I didn’t like humorous
titles, as although freelance, I wanted some semblance of reality, but credible
station names just seemed to evade me.
I was musing on the problem one day and it came to me that
most town names were composed of 2 parts developed from the history of the
site. I thought for fun if I listed where I had lived I might be able to mix
and match the parts to form a new name which would still have some relevance to
me. I had not moved about very much but it was surprising how many names I
could make.
I was born in Cirencester and lived a large part in Swindon,
Kenilworth and now retired in Wells so I investigated the make-up of these
names and found the following:
·
Ciren is the Roman name for the River Churn and
cester is settlement so it is the settlement on the river Churn.
·
Swin referred to the rearing of pigs (Swine) and
don is a vale so it is the vale of pigs
·
Kenil is a funny one as it is the Saxon name of
the woman (Cynehild) who owned the farm which started the settlement and worth
means possession or estate so it is the possession or estate of Cynehild
·
Wells stands on its own as a description of what
it was known for e.g. the numerous springs and wells in the City.
By combining the individual parts I came up with Cirendon,
Cirenworth, Cirenwells, Swincester, Swinworth, Swinwells, Kenilcester, Kenildon,
Kenilwells, Wellscester, Wellsdon, Wellsworth.
Some work and some don’t. Some to me didn’t
look right even though they were credible and some that were not credible
looked OK. As mentioned before I was born in Cirencester and spent a lot of my
working life in Swindon so I settled on these 2 places being part of the names
for my main towns e.g. the Mainline Station and the Branch Terminus. Others may
follow but I felt I needed names for these now as they were being built.
I will need further town names along the lines so I might
need to expand my search for names so I thought at that time to include areas
e.g. I was born in The Beeches, and lived in Watermoor which were suburbs of
Cirencester.
Swincester (settlement around pigs) looked good to me. It combined
both my favoured towns and was sort of credible. My mainline layout would take
elements from Swindon so this worked for me.
I didn’t like Cirendon (vale of the River Churn) which is
credible or Cirenwells which was not but I did like Cirenworth (possession or
estate of the River Churn) which was not really credible but if you stretch a
point that worth later became a way of saying settlement it does work. However,
Cirenworth was not liked by my personal advisor (my wife) so back to the
drawing board.
My branch terminus is a loose nod to Tetbury so how about
Cirenbury? No not liked but without too much thought she came up with Churnbury
which she liked and I did as well. Churn is a play on Ciren as it is the Saxon and,
I believe, earlier name for the same river. I checked the internet to see if
either of these towns existed and they don’t so that is how The Swincester and
Churnbury Railway (The S&C Railway) came into being. I just need a credible
history now.
As I said in my introduction this is just a bit of fun but
it does generate town names which are personal to me.
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