PLACE NAME ORIGINS

Places within the original coulsdon area.

COULSDON. Cudredesdune 967, Colesdone 1086 (DB), Cul(l)esdon 12th cent. Pre-Conquest spellings indicate ‘hill of a man called Cūthrǣd’, from OE pers. name + dūn. DB and other early medieval spellings suggest a different (or alternative) first element, perhaps a hill-name *Cull from Celtic *cull ‘bosom, belly’.

WOODMANSTERNE. Odemerestor [sic] 1086 (DB), Wudemaresthorne c.1190. ‘Thorn-tree by the boundary of the wood’. OE wudu + mǣre + thorn.

 PURLEY. Purlieu is a term used of the outlying parts of a place or district. It was a term of the old English forest law, and meant, as defined by Manwood (Treatise of the Forest Laws), a certain territory of ground adjoining unto the forest,. . .which. . .was once forest-land and afterwards disafforested by the perambulations made for the severing of the new forests from the old. The owner of freelands in the purlieu to the yearly value of forty shillings was known as a purlieu-man or purley-man.

 CHIPSTEAD. ‘market-place’, OE cēap-stede: Chipstead Surrey. Tepestede [sic] 1086 (DB), Chepstede 1100–29.

WOODCOTE. ‘cottage(s) in or by a wood’, OE wudu + cot. Chaldon, ‘hill where calves graze’, OE cealf + dūn:

CHALDON. Calvedone 1086 (DB)

CARSHALTON. Aultone 1086 (DB), Cresaulton 1235. ‘Farm by the river-spring where watercress grows’. OE ǣwell + tūn with the later addition of OE cærse.

A. D. MILLS. A Dictionary of British Place-Names. Oxford University Press. 2003. (DB)=Domesday Book.