For as long as
anyone can remember, somewhat indistinct areas of what is now known as ‘Cleveland ’ have been
known by the ancient name of ‘Langbaurgh’. ‘Redcar and Cleveland ’ – basically eastern Cleveland , from Redcar to Staithes – has been especially linked to the term. This
odd-sounding, strangely-spelt placename is a funny old concoction, and I can’t
be the only north-easterner who hadn’t a clue where it came from – until, that
is, I made a concerted effort to find out.
It transpires
that the name comes from the ‘village’ of the same name a little to the north
of Great Ayton – which, ironically, now lies a few yards over the border in North Yorkshire . I say
‘village’, but there’s not really very much there, and one wonders how the heck
it ever came to lend its name to the huge tracts of land which lie to the north
and east.
The answer seems
to lie in the geological feature which overlooks the village to the north,
namely, Langbaurgh Ridge. It lies bang on the North Yorkshire border, and
derives its name from the words ‘Lang’ (long) and ‘Beorge’ (hill). Turns out
that this ‘long-hill’ has been an ancient meeting point since the Viking era –
in other words, the administrative centre of the local ‘wapentake’. And this
was one big wapentake, extending and including everything on the map from Middlesbrough down to Whitby . For
centuries, the terms ‘Langbaurgh’ and ‘Cleveland’ (pre-1974 version) were
pretty much interchangeable.
In time, bits of
it were hacked off and subdivided. But ‘Langbaurgh’ lived on long into the
modern age as an administrative area, in the absence, even, of anything much
so-named ‘on the ground’. It was even resurrected in 1974 as the name of a
non-metropolitan district of the newly-created ‘County of Cleveland ’. In
1996, the area in question was re-branded as ‘Redcar and Cleveland ’.
So will we now
be able to finally shake off the curious old placename?
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