Owl Town

Last Thursday an American fighter pilot accidentally dropped a bomb on Yorkshire. In the crater thus created in a farmer's field an old name stone for the farm was revealed. Initial examination reveals it's probably 12th Century. The field is known as Owlcotes but the stone carving read "Old Ton". Our word Owl can be traced back to the Middle English "oule" which and of course Ton means Farm, so Old Ton (or Owl Farm) could be in Yorkshire, where there are lots of abandoned villages let alone disappearing towns.... I've driven through North Yorkshire a lot and that picture of the triangular green looks disturbingly familiar.

There was also a settlement called Old Ton in the 13th century in Allendale near Hexham in Northumberland...

Helen
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trAce

Comments

[Simon Mills]

Written in the trAce forum by Simon Mills:

Is it a coincidence that the plane that dropped the bomb in Yorkshire took off from Suffolk where Paul believes Oldton was? Was it really a bomb? The newspapers say it contained no explosives. Perhaps it was the name stone? Now why would that happen?