Across the country, over 60 Uptons are on record before 1500. This place-name family has attracted little scholarly interest, perhaps because the name form appears so simple - the upper farm or estate. Uptons might be variously classified as a toponym (up in the sense of being located on higher ground) or a directional name (up in the sense of being north in the modern sense or in the early middle ages east of another more significant estate centre). Neither of these suggestions needs to be entirely dismissed in the light of what follows, indeed these senses together with what is proposed here might happily coexist under the right circumstances.

Uptons recorded before (black) or at 1086 (red). In green, counties in which they will appear before 1500.

The first thing to note about Uptons is how regularly they appear in pre-Conquest sources. Seven separate Uptons can be found. This is a relatively high proportion of the total number. This leads to a second observation. Their strong early showing might suggest that the name form was common, but it might also be a by-product of their apparent association with large ecclesiastical and royal holdings, the very places for which documentation has survived. The idea that they are in some way connected to elite centres is supported by two other strands of evidence. In Domesday Book, where they appear in even greater numbers, they again often demonstrate dependence upon royal and church holdings, being held in soke or as berewicks of these more important places. Even where the sources are not explicit about any tenurial link, when Uptons are plotted on the ground, they often lie between 1.5 and 5 miles from known royal and minster estate centres.

The chronology of the names, the tenurial links, and the spatial relationship with estate centres all point to the idea that Uptons were integral parts of these early administrative units. They might not be found at their core, but were certainly not far removed from these centres of authority. The question then is what were these places? Here the evidence is lacking, but one possible function might be tentatively suggested.

We know that the Anglo-Saxon elite hunted. But we have no clear idea how or where they did. The evidence for pre-Conquest parks is extremely weak and we have no evidence for a formalized forest system of the sort encountered after the Norman take over. In the case of the Nottinghamshire Upton (a member of the Southwell estate, formerly a royal estate, granted in the mid-tenth century) we have a description of its bounds. What catches the eye is the uncultivated state of the land described (certainly when compared with the descriptions for other places in the estate). Was this the estate hunting ground, an area purposely set aside for this activity? It seems possible. Indeed areas of higher ground (Up) are just the kinds of places that we might suspect offered less incentive for intensive farming and were thus preserved by default as more wild spaces ideal for the sport.

Whether actively created or simply available, we might hypothesize that Uptons were used as elite hunting grounds in the early medieval period, only later becoming permanently settled and the land converted to agriculture. They lie a comfortable ride from the estate centre, places of retreat perhaps but not distant. Indeed many Uptons, because of their elevation, afford views back over the estate centre. It is not hard to imagine estate owners entertaining guests at hunting in their Uptons and showing off the more profitable parts of their holdings from these vantage points. But here we are perhaps going further than the evidence permits.

The view back over Upton, Notts. towards Southwell from Micklebarrow, one of the features named in the AD958 boundary clause.

I would, as always, be interested to hear from anyone with information regarding Uptons across the country that might add to, or indeed undermine, this line of reasoning.

Richard Jones

Further Reading:

Other than general surveys of place-names, I know of no publication which deals at length with the name Upton. The argument that has been briefly set out here will appear in full in the forthcoming book resulting from the 2009 workshops.

Jones, R. forthcoming: Hunting for the meaning of the place-name Upton, in R. Jones, D.N. Parsons and S. Semple (eds), Sense of Place in Anglo-Saxon England.