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usually is associated with ancient sloping pasture-land.
In Wallasey there are fields called thwaites, testifying to
the Norse origin of the agricultural system at the time
when these names were given. The hólmr, kjarr
(carr) and mýrr served, before the days of drained
land, as they do in Iceland now, for pasturing larger
cattle; lambs and calves were herded on the higher
ground. The name Calday (Domesday Calders) near
Thurstaston, perhaps meant "calf-dales," as Calgarth
at Windermere was anciently Calv-garth, and Calder
in Caithness was Kalfadalsá. Sheep were sent up the
moor by the Rake (from reka, to drive), and we find
the name at Eastham, as well as in Scotland and
north England. In summer the cattle were pastured
on the moor, and the dairymaids had their sæters or
shielings, which when the land became more cut up
into smaller holdings became independent farms;
hence the names containing satter and seat in the
Lake District, sometimes dropping the last consonant
and producing Seathwaite, Seascale. In Wirral, Seacombe
appears to represent the hvammr or "combe
of the seat," or sæter. Other words to express the
same practice are of the type of Summerhill and Sellafield,
found in the north of England, and also the
borrowed Gaelic airidh or ergh, found in the Orkneys
and Hebrides, as well as throughout Northumbria and
Galloway in various forms. Here in Wirral we find it
as Arrow, parallel with the same name at Coniston, and
perhaps giving us the sæter of the Gallgael Norseman
who had his bær at Thurstaston.
In the middle of the peninsula where the moorland
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