One of my favourite activities when planning a trip to a new area is to open up a map and look at the best routes and any places of interest. These days I’m likely to look at the best route to take, avoiding known bottlenecks, or with interesting places to stop along the way. Our ea rly forebears might not have had maps, but they too would have known about perils and points of interest on their journey, from the names of the places they would pass through. A traveller in the early medieval period might be wary of passing through Shackerley (in Lancashire, near Preston). The name means robbers wood! Sceacere – robber, ley – a clearing in woodland. Conversely a name ending in “ford” such as Guildford reveals a river crossing. Sometimes a ford would be named for the river it crossed, sometimes for the animals that used it – Swinford - swine ford, but could also be descriptive of the crossing – Fulford or foul ford. This brief pos...