237
SOME SUNKEN TRACK-WAYS NEAR
SAFFRON WALDEN.
By the late MILLER CHRISTY, F.L.S.
(With 2 Plates and 3 text figures.)
[The following article was offered to the Editor for publication
several years before the author's death in January, 1928, but no
opportunity has until now occurred for its appearance.]
THE too-little-known town of Saffron Walden—by far the most
charming of all our Essex towns—lies sheltered in the
bottom of a picturesque valley, with rounded chalk hills sloping
gently up from it on every side to a height of three hundred
feet or more. Its valley is one of a number of similar valleys,
each containing some village, the name of which ends in den,
from the O.E. denn, a dene or valley. For some unexplained
reason, the name den survives, as a place-name, in this part of
England, only in a very small chalk-hill area, less than nine
miles across each way, lying immediately to the south of Saffron
Walden, partly in Essex and partly in the adjoining portion of
Hertfordshire ; which two counties (with, perhaps, a small
portion of Middlesex) once formed the Kingdom of Essex, or,
to speak more exactly, of the East Saxons. The parishes within
this small area which bear names terminating in den are
(Saffron) Walden, Great Wenden, Little Wenden (now combined
as Wendens Ambo), Heydon,1 Arkesden, Meesden, Berden,
Debden,2 Amberden, Manuden, and possibly Quendon.3 The
termination den appears in place-names elsewhere in Hertford-
shire, but nowhere else in Essex.4
As one result of Saffron Walden lying, as stated, in a deep
hollow, it is naturally approached from all sides by steeply-
descending roads—seven in number. These, come, respectively
from Chesterford, Hadstock, Ashdon, Radwinter, Thaxted,
Debden, and Newport. All are cut deeply into the hill-sides ;
this cutting-in was caused, without doubt, in the first instance,
1 Heydon should properly be spelled Heydon : for it appears in Domesday Book as "Hainden,"
not as Haindun ; which shows that, though it lies very high for Essex (about 440 ft.) it takes
its name, not from any hill (O.E. dun a hill) but from dam, a dene or valley.
2 In Domesday Book "Dippeden" the deep-dene—no doubt that now dammed to form
the large artificial lake in Debden Park.
3 "Kuenadan" in Domesday Book. It may be a den, but is probably a dun.
4 I feel convinced that Lexden, on the other side of Essex, is not so called after a dene (for
there is no dene in it), but after the hill on which the village stands—that the spelling of its
name is, in short, corrupted from Lexdon.