topography

from Milly Molly Mandy, by Joyce Lankester Brisley

Checking the map recently, on the way to visit my father in Sussex, I got drawn - as always - into exploration of the map-minutiae: the multiplicity of little tors, copses and valleys; the generous spattering of "historic" symbols indicating earthworks, monuments and other ancient remnants; the water water everywhere, thin blue veins meandering up, down and around the contour lines.

And I take a particular delight, always, in some of the place-names.

The names below - towns and villages - all come from a section of Sussex in South East England. They are the kind of place names which I imagine appearing on a map like the one shown above, which comes from one of the books I loved as a child.

Some of the names we spotted in Sussex might be suggestive of a particular type of resident:

Catsfield

Warbleton

Crabbet Park

Plumpton Green

Muddles Green

Cackle Street

Limpsfield

Wartling

Ripe

don't some of these conjure up delightful images?

Some of them are prosaic and - possibly - descriptive:

Small Field

Underriver

Crouch

some of them are simply picturesque:

Rose Hill

Sunnyside

Brightling

or its opposite:

Foul Mile

Hellingly

(what is term for the opposite of picturesque?)

while some of them hint tantalizingly at some past history:

Tarring Neville

Saint Hill

Blackboys

Toy’s Hill

Iron’s Bottom

And some of them appeal to me for no clearly definable reason:

Flimwell

Pease Pottage

Small Dole

In which of these places do you think you'd choose to live?