was then presented to them? Here were to be found excellent water, wood and reeds for their huts, and for fuel, cover for their game, on which they would at first subsist, an open chalk country behind them, and, when they began to have herds and flocks, and arable lands, the rich diluvial soils of our valley and its slopes for their subsistence.
With such natural advantages, we may perhaps safely conclude that from the earliest periods when man occupied our island, around the head-springs of our river at Croydon were placed some of the dwelling-places of the natives. These aborigines would soon give simple names to the objects around them; some of which, I believe, they yet retain. The well-drained land on which the "old town" of Croydon is placed would then have abounded with a chain of pools and irregularly filled water-channels. Now, within a few yards of those old channels we have certain names which seem to refer to these waters, such as Tain-field (which comes, I take it, from the Celtic word tain, water, and feld, a field) and Duppa, or rather Dubbers Hill (perhaps from the Celtic word dubadh, a pond or pool). Coomb Lane leads from these through a little valley; now cym, in old British, signifies a low situation or valley.
Then came the period when the increase of the population caused not only the formation of track-ways or roads,[1] but brought into this neighbourhood the pagan priesthood, the first races of whom are perchance utterly forgotten; then came the Druids and their mystic religious ceremonies, and then would soon arise the pagan temples—rude erections, of whose faint, yet pretty distinct
- ↑ One cause of principal roads being made from the sea-coast to London in the direction of Croydon, might be that they thus rounded the head-springs of the Wandel and their attendant swamps.
