Footeran Lane runs from the edge of Yealand Redmayne, past the village school and village to Yealand Conyers. The low-level site and hall may have been a rubbish dumping ground before the school was built in 1840. There is also a waste ground adjoining the last house Well Lane which a resident of the village, born locally in 1900, referred to as “the footeran”. She recalled that this is where the refuse collectors took the rubbish they collected on their then rare visits. The origin of the name is not recorded.
The question of the origin was aired in the Journal of the Lancashire Dialect Society last year, correspondent suggested a connection with French forms and perhaps a link with some lingering Norman-French term. In demotic usage Foutre quelque chose par terre means to throw something on the ground, foutoir is a messy place and foutaise is rubbish; and terrain is a piece of ground in French and English. An alternative possibility is that the term was brought back from World War I, but the history of the name has not been traced far enough back to decide whether this is even possible.
A century ago Carnforth had an influx of miners, largely from Dudley in Worcestershire. A north midland term for a drift mine was “footerill”, and this has been brought into the discussion. If this is relevant at all, the explanation of “footeran” will be more complicated. The editor would be glad to hear from any reader who has any specific information which may clarify the origins of Footeran Lane.
Mr Kenneth Greaves notes that the Oxford English Dictionary gives the word “footer” as means to triffle or potter about. Hence it is suggested “footeran” might indicate a place for footering or hanging about and refers to a lover’s lane. “Footer” also appears in Lancashire dialect dictionaries; the change from footering to footeran is not covered.
The Yealand pronunciation can be represented as “foot run” the “u” indicating a short “oo”. It must be remarked that Footeran Lance is the main route for traffic into and out of the village and not obviously likely as a lover’s lane.
Further information about this name has come to light, thanks to the members who are reading nineteenth century newspapers.
On September 7th 1833 the Lancaster Gazette carried an advertisement for the sale by auction of “Two closes, or parcels, of Land, situate at Yealand Conyers, called Great Footerns and Little Footerns. . . ”
The tithe schedule of 1846 shows that there was a field named Footern in Yealand Conyers, and another Footern, as well as Little Footern, and Footern Hemplands in Redmayne. (Fig. 1) Fig.1 Border of Yealand Conyers and Redmayne 1843 (Field names from Tithe schedules) They lay around the pool, which then, as now, lay behind the school. They are bounded on the west by Footeran Lane. Some of the field names remain, like Fall, (to the west of Footeran Lane) and Flatt, but Footern seems to have been lost as a name. Great and Little Footern are now one field, which is known as School Field. The Footern in Yealand Conyers, now part of the Hartley estate, is also referred to as School Field. The information on modern field names was kindly supplied by Mr Edward Walker of Hill Top Farm, whose land includes the Redmayne Footerns. Mr Walker was also able to confirm, from his personal memories, the former existence of the pool marked at the south end of Footern Hemplands. It, as well as the cattle trough at the end of Well Lane, were accepted watering places, though the pool was not reliable in dry weather. All this still does not give an explanation of the name, but is perhaps a step towards discovering it.
The origin of this name has been discussed above. Mr. Quinn, the headmaster of Yealand School, may have solved the problem for us. He has pointed out that Mr J. Rawlinson Ford, in his undated manuscript article “About the Yealands”1, refers to the pool behind Yealand School as Foul Tarn. Footeran seems a very possible corruption of this, especially as there is an intermediate form known. On the Deed of Conveyance of Yealand District School, 1840 the meadow just to the north of the school is called “Footern”. Mr Rawlinson Ford gives no explanation of Foul Tarn; apparently that was simply the name it was known by when he wrote i.e sometime before his death in the early 1930s.
Presumably it means exactly what it seems to, a foul or dirty pool. There is, for instance, a Foulsyke (an affluent of the Eden) which is accepted as a ‘dirty stream’ (A.H. Smith, The Place-names of Westmorland, Part 1, 1967), from the Old English word ful, ‘dirty’. Foul Tarn could certainly create dirty conditions. Mr Ford mentions “an old inhabitant” who remembered when the whole way past the school was so “wet and founderous” that people sometimes had to leave it and take to the fields to get round. It is worth considering also that Foul Tarn lies next to fields labelled Hemplands. Hemp had to be ‘retted’ (soaked) in water before it could be used for weaving. This was a notoriously stinking process, so that the pool would have been very foul when hemp was still processed in Yealand. Incidentally the pool may soon be much less full since the children of Yealand School have been carrying out a project to clean it up.
Notes
- Lancaster Reference Library D5635 PT8443 [Ed This may now be housed at Lancashire County Archives] ↩︎
Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 15 1990 and Issue 16 1991 and Issue 17 1991