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Beck and Gill © Dominick Tyler 2014

I’ve had a lot of terms sent in over the last year or so. Hundreds of people have been generous with their knowledge, sharing words from their local areas, from their memories of childhood and from their professional expertise. Each submission is a treasure and I’m very grateful for them all whether they arrive alone or in a cluster. Several people have offered whole troves of words but this week I was sent a truly magnificent haul from Bryan Miller, who 20 years ago started a similar project to mine but focusing on the English uplands.

Bryan has collected hundreds of words and word-elements and collated them into a magnificent glossary. I’ll be slowly adding his collection to the glossary here (a lot of the words are new to me so I’m very excited to have them) but I also wanted to make this resource available in it’s entirety so that Bryan’s achievement can be fully appreciated and properly acknowledged.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

I hope that this book will give you some insight into the way our forebears lived. They named the places. They worked in some very isolated locations. When you look at some of the mining locations it is difficult to understand how it was economic to transport the ore to a place where it could be processed or sold. The winter weather conditions at the isolated mines must have been terrible. Whilst some of the bigger mines had lodgings they were very primitive. It is little wonder that the life expectancy was so short in bygone days. I hope this book will improve your navigation and increase the enjoyment of your walks.

You can download a pdf version of Bryan’s complete book by clicking on the link below:

Map Reader’s Companion for Upland England