Rowley Burn (Northumberland)

Rowley Burn (also known as Rowley Brook and Ham Burn, NY 9358) is a stream in Northumberland, running around three miles south of Hexham before joining the Devil's Water, which flows into the River Tyne.[1]

Rowley Burn

Etymology

Allen Mawer's Place-Names of Northumberland and Durham implies that the name of the stream may share the same etymology as places called Roughley, from Old English rūh (rough') and lēah ('open land in woodland').[2]

Geology

The formation of the Rowley Burn valley has been discussed by J. B. Sissons.[3]

Earlier history

Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, completed around 731, recounts a story of the Battle of Heavenfield, which Bede says took place 'in loco, qui lingua Anglorum Denisesburna, id est Riuus Denisi, uocatur' ('in a place which in the language of the English is called Denisesburna, that is the stream of Denisus' around 634.[4] William Greenwell found evidence in a charter issued for the Archbishop of York by Thomas de Whittington in 1233 that Denisesburna was identical with Rowley Burn, and the identification has been accepted since.[5] Despite Bede's interpretation of the Old English word Denisesburna as meaning 'Denisus's stream', more recent scholarship has judged that the first element more likely comes from the Brittonic languages.[6]

References
  1. For the grid reference, see Andrew Breeze, 'Bede’s Hefenfeld and the Campaign of 633', Northern History, 44 (2007), 193–97 (p. 193); doi:10.1179/174587007X208326.
  2. Allen Mawer, The Place-Names of Northumberland and Durham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), pp. 169-70.
  3. J. B. Sissons, 'Sub‐glacial Stream Erosion in Southern Northumberland', Scottish Geographical Magazine, 74.3 (1958), 163-174, doi:10.1080/00369225808735722.
  4. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. by B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, corr. repr. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), iii.1.
  5. Julia Barrow, 'Oswald and the Strong Man Armed', in The Land of the English Kin: Studies in Wessex and Anglo-Saxon England in Honour of Professor Barbara Yorke, ed. by Alexander Langlands and Ryan Lavelle (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 183-96 (p. 189), doi:10.1163/9789004421899_010, citing William Greenwell, 'Address to the Members of the Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club (read 19 March 1863)', Transactions of the Tyneside Naturalists’ Field Club, 6 (1863–64), 1–33 (pp. 13–14).
  6. Alaric Hall, 'A gente Anglorum appellatur: The Evidence of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum for the Replacement of Roman Names by English Ones During the Early Anglo-Saxon Period', in Words in Dictionaries and History: Essays in Honour of R. W. McConchie, ed. by Olga Timofeeva and Tanja Säily, Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice, 14 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2011), pp. 219-31 (p. 226, n. 3); doi:10.1075/tlrp.14.16hal.


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