Dumble is a dialect word meaning a wooded valley.
Dumble is a dialect word mainly (but not exclusively) confined to the north and east Midlands both as a place-name element and as a lexical item. It seems to contain the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
''dumbel'' or ''dymbel'', 'hollow; wooded valley; deep cut water course'. ''The English Dialect Dictionary'' finds the word in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire (where 'doomble' is also found) and in Shropshire, with the meaning of a wooded valley, a belt of trees along the bed of a small stream; a ravine through which a watercourse runs; sometimes the word appears in the plural.J. Wright, ''The English dialect dictionary'' (in five vols), (Oxford, 1898-1905), vol.2, p.206
There are fine examples close to Lambley and to the south of Southwell both in Nottinghamshire where the clay bedrock plateau made up of
Mercia Mudstone
The Mercia Mudstone Group is an early Triassic lithostratigraphic group (a sequence of rock strata) which is widespread in Britain, especially in the English Midlands – the name is derived from the ancient kingdom of Mercia which corresponds to t ...
is dissected by a number of streams, forming steep sided, wooded valleys. This gives a pleasing undulating landscape, locally known as 'The Dumbles'. These areas provide a habitat for Bluebell,
yellow archangel
''Lamium galeobdolon'', commonly known as yellow archangel, artillery plant, aluminium plant, or yellow weasel-snout, is a widespread wildflower in Europe, and has been introduced elsewhere as a garden plant. It displays the zygomorphic flower mo ...
,
ramsons
''Allium ursinum'', known as wild garlic, ramsons, cowleekes, cows's leek, cowleek, buckrams, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, bear leek, Eurasian wild garlic or bear's garlic, is a bulbous perennial flowering plant in the amaryllis family Amary ...
,
dog's mercury
''Mercurialis perennis'', commonly known as dog's mercury, is a poisonous woodland plant found in much of Europe as well as in Algeria, Iran, Turkey, and the Caucasus, but almost absent from Ireland, Orkney and Shetland.sweet woodruff. To the southwest of Southwell there are two dumbles,
Halloughton
Halloughton is a village in Nottinghamshire, England, 9 miles west of Newark-on-Trent. It lies in the civil parish of Southwell and the district of Newark and Sherwood. Most of the property there was owned by the Church Commissioners until 19 ...
Dumble and Westhorpe Dumble, streams sufficiently large to be labelled Dumble on the 50,000:1 and 25,000:1
maps. On a smaller scale, some areas are known locally as 'The Dumbles', for example; west of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, in Nottinghamshire, at the end of Doles Lane is a small, wooded, deep cut stream valley with banks adorned with Bluebells.
Other uses
*The surname Dumble is believed to be of Norman origin and a corruption of the name Donville, a village in Normandy, brought to England by followers of William the Conqueror who came from there.