CLOSE examination of the names of fields, lanes, etc., in Hallamshire and the surrounding districts will disclose some curious information as to the life and habits of the itinerant trader, whether native or foreign. Ages before the invention of stage-coaches and railways the commercial traveller and the travelling merchant were with us, being known as chapmen, packmen, pedders, etc. The villages were little oligarchies, providing for themselves nearly all the necessaries of life, and the roads were chiefly used by itinerant traders and pilgrims.
In 1637 there was a lane in Ecclesfield known as Packman's lane, and a lane bearing the same name runs through Thorpe Salvin. And near the neighbouring village of Treeton the Ordnance map mentions a bridge called Packman's Bridge. There is a Chapman Field in Ecclesall, and a village called Copmanthorpe or Coupmanthorpe near York. Copman Holes—called Cogmanhoile in 1533—is the name of a valley below Bailey Hill in Bradfield and between Bailey Wood and the Agden dam. Cogman a Clough is on Howden moor in Bradfield. Cowper Well, a well by the roadside in Ecclesfield, probably means chapman's well, or merchant's well. Harrison mentions "an intacke called Tinker" in Bradfield; the lane in which the urn described in the first chapter of this book was found is called Tinker lane, and there is a Tinker Brook in Bradfield. There is a Tinker Sick near Chesterfield, and a Pedlar Hagg in Ashopton near Sheffield. In the will of a Sheffield man, dated 1725, I find mention of "two closes called the Hawker-Starrs lying near Crooks Moor," the same closes being described a few years later as "Hawkers Starrs." In a list of fieldnames near Sheffield, dated 1784, I find a place called Hocker Storth, and the name Hockerstorths occurs in a plan of land at Ecclesfield dated 1732. Now the word "hawker," according to Professor Skeat, is equivalent to the Danish höker, a pedlar, and hokkerye, also spelt hukkerye, meaning the pedlar's trade, occurs in Piers Plowman. The old form of "hawker" seems, then, to have been hocker or hucker. On Masbrough common near Rotherham the six-inch Ordnance map gives a place called Huckacrow, which seems to contain the words hucker, a hawker, and the Old Norse krá, Danish kro, a nook, corner. At Oxcroft near Bolsover in Derbyshire is a field called Farman Close, which may be traveller's close. Even the palmer or pilgrim had to tarry in desolate places on his way to the Holy Land, for a little valley near Eckington in Derbyshire still bears the name of Pomer Sick, pomer being the old or the dialedlal pronunciation of "palmer." With more or less distinctness and certainty the evidence still lingers upon the country side that the itinerant trader or merchant was a conspicuous element in old English society. He has left his mark upon the roads, the fields, and the valleys, and even, as it would seem, upon the roadside well.
An old road running across the moors in Ecclesfield was known as a "Pack and Prime Road." The Norfolk term packway seems to be synonymous with Peddar Way in that county, a name by which an ancient line of Roman road is known. "The greater part of this road," says Way, "across the champaign parts of Norfolk is still called the Peddar Way, doubtless because, like the Welshman's road in Warwickshire and the parts adjacent, the straight direction of its course caused it to be frequented by itinerant traders. The Peddar Way may be traced upon the Ordnance Survey through near its whole length."