This post is focused on roads and road names.
However it starts with an update on parish boundary stones. The post on Parish Iconography in Trinity Part One mentioned boundary stones between Trinity and St Saviour.
A book style stone dated 1888 marks the boundary on La Rue de la Boucterie. The stone records the names of the two Constables. Beneath it is a stone dated 1687, which gives the initials PL:M and M;LS. I checked these were not the initials of the Constables at that time, so presumably this is a marriage stone, which was just placed below the new parish boundary stone for decoration and not an earlier parish boundary stone.
“Walks for Motorists in Jersey” indicated a parish boundary stone at the junction of La Rue des Boulées with La Rue de Guilleaumerie. When Anne & I first looked for it, the stone was buried in earth. We returned with a trowel. Once unburied it was clearly marked on one side [St] S for St Saviour and [T]Nt for Trinity on the other.
In Trinity, universally, road signs have green lettering on a white ground edged in green and bear the parish crest but not the parish name. You are expected to know you are in Trinity. In this parish there is a particularly strong connection between road names and seigneurial fiefs.
The first picture is of a beautifully quiet crossroads. The four roads all have different names and all are in parish iconography, Rue de la Lande, Rue du Nord, Rue du Pont and Rue de la Petite Lande. Lande is waste land or heath originally likely to have been beyond the field system.
Rue de la Croiserie forms three sides of an oblong with the Trinity Main Road. It indicates a road intersection. It is one of two Vingtaines in Trinity called after a feature in the road network at the time the Vingtaines, subdivisions of the Parishes, were created. The other is Rondin indicating a road crossing where there is room for a horse and cart to turn around.
“Jersey Place Names” shows the road being called La Rue D’Ampierre or Dampierre . When a road sign was put up, it was called Rue D’Empierre. Note the difference in form. Jersey Place Names gives the derivation as from Dampierre. Dam is apparently a corruption of the Latin, dominus, the standard pre-Reformation title of a priest, so Dampierre refers either to Father Peter or St Peter. Therefore the Dampierre form with a capital D should have been preferred for the name sign to D’Empierre with D’ as a preposition chosen by the parish.
Diélament is another Fief, part of the 13th Century grant to Drogo Barentin, then Warden of the Isles. The name may mean something like “May God make it fertile”. The Fief was held for a long time by the Lempriēres, as seigneurs of Rozel, but in the 19th Century ownership of Fief and manor house was separated so that the Lempriēre-Robins retain the Fief, but do not occupy the house.
Godillerie is also a Fief, according to Jersey Place Names, either a Sub-Fief of Augrès or of Lempriēre.
Ville ȧ l’Eveque refers to what was originally a Fief held by an ecclesiastical seigneur, in this case the Bishop of Avranches. Ville here is the common Jersey place name for a hamlet. The Fief would have been taken into Royal hands during the 14th and 15th Century wars between England and France as an “Alien Priory” and was then subject to Royal re-grant to a lay seigneur. Ville ȧ l’Eveque also gives its name to one of Trinity’s Vigntaines.
“If” is a yew tree.
There is also a recent “Parish Road”, La Ruelle de Mont Ifer, not far away. It leads through some lovely hidden country.
Ruelle es Biches, a hind, is another off-road Parish Road. This one has steps and is too steep to ride down for most cyclists.
Sellier is a saddler.
Garenne is a (seigneurial) rabbit warren.
Geon is gorse or furze. A Tas de Geon is a pile of gorse, piled up for a warning beacon.
Monnaie refers to a mint established in 1646
The Parish Iconography posts covered the five parishes I could cycle to during two hour Lock Down. With Lock Down relaxed and with other commitments I shall hold off making further Parish Iconography posts for now….
Of Books, Bikes & Islands 