15 weird and wonderful field names shared by farmers

Borrow Bread, Dear Bought, Purgatory, Gaudy Close, Ding Dong… just a few of the field names in a new book about their origins.

Here are some of your favourite (or most apt) field names. Got a better one? Tweet it and mention Farmers Weekly.

See also: 10 things only a farmer’s child would know

• “We had a Monkey Hump, it was the pre Enclosures Act map name. Could find any records anywhere to find out why that name! Also 9 acres is actually 14 – road on 2 sides and a farm track on the other,” says Tim Bullock.
• “I have a Porn Field! When I worked for Salmons late 80s/early 90s we used to silage that field. On the bottom headland there was an odd set of buildings, some like a film set. Every now and then ladies would appear in robes and the odd gent… Turns out it was a porn studio,” says Peter Lowth.
• David Richardson offered “Mud Pightle, Shepherds Hills and Bulfers”.
• “We have one called Cheesecake. I don’t know why,” says Verity.
• “Maggie Thatcher and Nelson Mandela are a couple I don’t forget,” says Neil Harper.
• Agronomist Todd Jex chipped in with “Starveacre and Worlds End are probably the most amusing I’ve come across.”
• “10 acre… but the field is actually only 5 acres,” says a befuddled Alice.
• Kat Evans says: “Grew up on a smallholding. Top field was Bottom field – the lowest (but also technically the largest!). Big field wasn’t, but easier than saying “one between top and middle”. Middle was nearly in the middle. House field did have the house in.”
• “There was Slates on a Cotswold farm I worked on. The Cotswold brash was so thick it was hard to spot the soil but it still grew a good crop. Here in flat Suffolk we have Hillies near us. The only gentle slope for miles,” says Nicola Currie.
• “We have a “first humpy” and a “second humpy”, so named as they’re both humpy and one is in front of the other,” says Tim.
• @DamnDelicious: “My wettest horror field is perfectly named. It’s The Black Bog! Only original field I can remember after I bought the farm in 1996.”
• @rattycastle: “We have Chimney gill. It was an old minefield. Onetree as it just has one massive oak tree in the middle. Pond pastures and the Tull.”
• @dalecottagefarm: “Warren field. Hump back field. Junk field (used to be full of old scrap). Personal favourite…drum roll… ‘The Big Square Field’.”
• “Harry Robson after the shepherd who had that field,” says Christine Bell.
• @DorsetDairyCo: “Soggy Bottom.”