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• Place names

Names from historical writing:

The following appear as names for Berkshire. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

• The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
• Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
• References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.

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Names for administrative units:

These names were used for units associated with Berkshire. Click on the links for details of the units and their names:

Name	Unit Type	Source
BERKS	Ancient County	1801 Census of Great Britain, Table [1], 'Population Abstract'.
BERKSHIRE	Administrative County	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 562.
	Ancient County	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 13.
	Archdeaconry	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 785.
	Constituency (PCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
	Poor Law/Registration County	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 13.
BERKSHIRE COUNTY	1841 Occupation reporting area	1841 Census of Great Britain, Table [1], 'Occupation Abstract'.
EAST BERKSHIRE	Constituency (CCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)

NB: These are all the names of all the administrative units which we have associated with Berkshire, and you must judge whether all or even any of them are variant names for the place. They may well include the names of other locations or areas:

• For cities, the associated administrative units will usually include parishes, especially ecclesiastical parishes, one of whose names is the name of the city followed by a saint's dedication, with just the saint's name as another variant. Parish names will sometimes also include "places" within towns.
• Districts usually contain more than one settlement, and some districts had their names changed to take the name of a completely different settlement. As we link each administrative unit to just one of our "places", usually the last place the unit was named after, in these cases the name for a completely different place will appear on this page.
• Similarly, a unit may sometimes be named after a particular settlement it contains and sometimes to indicate its location within a higher level unit. This was very common among British parliamentary constituencies in rural areas, one name referring to their main town and another indicating that they were in, say, the southern part of the relevant county.



Every name listed here is linked to the particular historical source in which it appears, but we cannot claim that these are all the historical names of Berkshire, or that our references are to the first usage of the names. Similarly, we have tried to ensure that names included here are not transcription errors by ourselves, but it is possible they are the result of errors made when the historical sources were printed, or the result of visiting authors or census officials mis-hearing local names.

How to reference this page:



GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Berkshire | Place names for the county, A Vision of Britain through Time.

URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/17461/names

Date accessed: 10th December 2024