26
NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
Mr. W. H. Dalton, F.G.S., author of the very interesting paper on "Fowlness"
in The Essex Naturalist for 1889 (vol. iii., p. 239;, has written vigorously
in defence of the true orthography :—" As a native of this interesting, if not
romantic, island (and proud of the fact), allow me to point out that on a few
occasions a properly educated official has used the above orthography ; that it has
to my knowledge been used for forty-five years in the local centre of light and
leading, the rectory, and elsewhere; that it was changed from Vogelnase,
Fughelnesse, and Foulenesse, to Fowlnesse (temp. Will. et Mar.) in accordance
with the general name for wild birds, and that the retention of the "u" if both
incorrect and misleading. A parallel name, Foulmire, in Cambridgeshire, was a
few months ago corrected to Fowlmere by the Post-office authorities, on precisely
similar evidence. If any real change of name be adopted, I would suggest
'Fowlers' Island,' as connoting the presence of both feathered and unfeathered
bipeds. The only objection to any change is that when, by the exploitation of
the mineral wealth of Essex, the Crouch and other estuaries come to resemble
the Wear and Tyne, with their fleets of collier craft, the present common mis-
spelling may become appropriate. I may add that natives speak of 'Fow'ness' ;
it is only the inhabitants of the adjacent island of Great Britain that sound the
'1,' the elision of which necessitates the use of 'w,' as the diphthong 'ou' would
sound differently before a single consonant." In a later letter, alluding to an
idea put forward in the newspapers that the name had some reference to the form
of the promontory, Mr. Dalton continues :—"I take it that the name Fowlness
was not applied from any resemblance to a bird's beak, which is indeed perceptible
only to a poetic mind, aided by a map, but from its being emphatically the 'ness'
frequented by wildfowl. The broad, sandy flat running out as a sharp promontory
(naze, nose, or ness), affords still, despite the cannonade from Shoebury, a feed-
ing-place for myriads of birds of many species, being not only a gathering ground
for organic refuse brought down by the Thames and Medway, but the crowded
habitat of cockles, worms, and other marine consumers of garbage, who there
fulfil the great law, 'Eat and be eaten.' That the name applied primarily to the
sands is evident from the rounded outline of the enclosed land till within a period
much more recent than the name. If we cut back the land in imagination to the
road leading from the Crouch through Courtsend to Eastwick and the Rugwood
Head road, a curved line which is evidently that of an old wall, we shall have
nothing worth the name of ness. There is yet much to be learned about not
only the nomenclature, but the former geography of our Essex estuaries. Within
the memory of even young men, considerable changes have occurred, in the loss
of land here, and its increase there. When to the effect of alterations in the set
of tidal currents we add that of oscillations of level, as evidenced in raised beaches
and submerged forests, it becomes clear that our present maps do not show the
past, any more than the future, outline of our county."
From the many letters in the local papers on this subject, we extract the
following interesting particulars from an anonymous correspondent ("Bird of
Prey, Oxon.") in "The Essex Herald," for January 10th:—"Concerning the
earliest records of Fowlness, anciently written Fughelness, it may be of interest
to state that although there is no actual mention of it in Domesday Book, a
note appended to the translation of Domesday says, 'There is little doubt that
Foulness Island was included in some of these estates of Suene in Rochford
Hundred.' This takes us back to the time of the Danes towards the end of the
tenth century, implying that the island was, at any rate in part, reclaimed before