Primitive Gait

[Mike Sales]

There is a terrace with this curious name in Gosberton, near Spalding.
There are many "Gates" in this area, but I have made no progress in accounting for this odd name.
I wonder if anyone can help?

[reohn2]

Have you had a chance to watch how the residence walk?

[Jdsk]

Is gait ever used as a derivation of gatt / gate / gat / gata from the Germanic/ Norse root meaning gate or street?

Edited... gait in ordinary English has the same derivation, I didn't know that.

gait
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gait
includes:

Middle English
Noun
gait
(rare) Alternative form of gate (“way”)

Jonathan

[Mike Sales]

Is gait ever used as a derivation of gatt / gate from the Germanic/ Norse root meaning gate or street?

Jonathan

I have never come across that spelling, and as I wrote, all of the many other roads in the East of England are called "Gate". These obviously have that Scandinavian root.
It is conceivable that this particular one has a distorted descent though.

[Jdsk]

Crossed posts... it is recorded as a spelling of gate in Middle English.

Now on to Primitive... any local history of Methodism?

Jonathan

[Mike Sales]

Crossed posts... it is recorded as a spelling of gate in Middle English.

Now on to Primitive... any local history of Methodism?

Jonathan

Oh yes. Methodism was strong here. So possible.
It's also interesting that many of the Mayflower colonists were from the Boston area.

I think I remember a chapel near there. Next time I ride that way I will keep my eyes open as to its Methodical variety.

Further along that long, straight road into the fen are a series of access roads called by the less interesting names of First, Second, Third and Fourth Drove.

[rotavator]

[/quote]

Oh yes. Methodism was strong here. So possible.
It's also interesting that many of the Mayflower colonists were from the Boston area.

I think I remember a chapel near there. Next time I ride that way I will keep my eyes open as to its Methodical variety.

[/quote]

Here is a link to a former Primitive Methodist chapel in Gooberton/Gosberton

https://www.myprimitivemethodists.org.uk/content/chapels/lincolnshire/g-lincolnshire/gooberton_gosberton_clough_primitive_methodist_

[Mike Sales]

Here is a link to a former Primitive Methodist chapel in Gooberton/Gosberton

https://www.myprimitivemethodists.org.uk/content/chapels/lincolnshire/g-lincolnshire/gooberton_gosberton_clough_primitive_methodist_

Your link has this:-

Although there is no obvious sign of the chapel any more, on the south side of Clough Road and just east of the bridge at Beck Bank, there is a group of four semi detached houses, probably built in the 1950s and bearing the name Primitive Gait. A Primitive Methodist chapel is marked there on Ordnance Survey maps from 1888 and is still there in 1932, but has gone by the 1973 map.

The longer surviving former Wesleyan chapel was on the other side of the drain; seems appropriate that there was a division between the two.

Thank you, you have explained it. And I expect Jonathan's variant spelling is correct too, though I wonder why that spelling was chosen in the 1950s.
The chapel I remember must be the Wesleyan though, not the demolished Primitive one.

[Jdsk]

... though I wonder why that spelling was chosen in the 1950s.

I would guess because of a specific older habit of naming streets Gait and the consequent familiarity. So used as a label rather than any suggestion that it was in common parlance.

Jonathan

[thirdcrank]

AIUI, there was little uniformity in spelling before the growth of printing which led to some standardisation of both spelling and punctuation, the point being that there was then a division between authors and publishers. The next move towards spelling rules came with increased elementary teaching which brought with it learning "by rote." I suspect that for somebody like Chaucer, spelling was very low on his priorities.

[Jdsk]

Yes... I'd add that the standardisation that accompanied printing was often arbitrary. And then people started trying to explain some of it by reference to "rules". And after that we're wide open to the prescriptivist fallacy.

I recommend Crystal:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spell-Out-singular-English-spelling/dp/1846685680

Jonathan

[Mike Sales]

Thanks Jonathan and Rotovator.
Though you have made the mystery mundane!

[Mike Sales]

Standardised spelling can remove the ambiguities that English often throws up. I find reading prose (or poetry) written when spelling was more fluid requires extra effort.

[peetee]

Crossed posts... it is recorded as a spelling of gate in Middle English.

Now on to Primitive... any local history of Methodism?

Jonathan

Not far from me is Primitive Row and the adjacent Methodist chapel still stands on Primitive Hill.

[reohn2]

......Further along that long, straight road into the fen are a series of access roads called by the less interesting names of First, Second, Third and Fourth Drove.

I do like originality in a road name.


PS, I wonder what the next road along is named


PPS,I live in an avenue just off Slag Lane