What's In A Name?

First-fruits from the polytunnel

When I bought the six-acre parcel of land in mid-Wales in the dying days of 2012, it didn't have a name. The title deed just refers to it as “Land to the south-east of Groesllwyd”, the name of a house on the other side of the A-road. Old tithe maps suggest that it once belonged to the owner of that house but at some point, maybe not all that long ago, it was sold off as a separate entity.

The previous owners didn't call it anything particular in their small ad which I found on the website permaculture.org.uk. They had owned it for five years or so and only visited it occasionally, living fifty miles away on the border with England.

So when I made it my own and began to live on it in a caravan, it was tempting to christen it. But try as I might I couldn't find anything that seemed right. “Matt's Bog” was one of the leading contenders. Something Welsh would have been more fitting, that would capture something of its essence - its river, its trees, its flatness, its bogginess? Yet an English person giving a bit of land in the heart of Wales a name, whether in English or Welsh, didn't seem quite right.

It's just remained “my land” ever since. Until now. I was chatting with the local vicar when he suddenly asked “Do you know what your land is called?” I didn't, I replied. I didn't think it had a name. “Well it does” he said, “Wern Isa”. He had been talking with the farmer at the top of the hill when my bit of land came up in conversation, and the vicar had been told that was its name.

After getting him to spell it, I asked what it meant. “Isa means low, and Wern means a marshy flat area next to a river, where alders often grow” he replied. That made sense. It certainly is marshy in places, and it borders the river Cleifion.

Oddly enough the market street in Waterloo I used to live near for several years is called Lower Marsh (presumably due to its long-gone historic marshy quality), and now I own and work on a real Lower Marsh. A coincidence almost worthy of Douglas Adam's Infinite Improbability Drive, no?