Low Cocklaw is a small hamlet about west of Berwick-upon-Tweed, England. Until the early 1980s it was a working farm but is now entirely residential. It is surrounded by rolling farmland which is dominated by cereal growing.

Etymology

Allen Mawer Sir Allen Mawer (8 May 1879 − 22 July 1942) was an English philologist. A notable researcher of Viking activity in the British Isles, Mawer is best known as the founder of the English Place-Name Society, and as Provost (education), Provost ...

rather tentatively identified the early place-name Creklawe~Crokelawe attested in 1296 with Cocklaw. If so, the initial ''cr''- points to a Cumbric origin: Cumbric ''crug'' 'hill', to which was later added

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 ...

''hlǣw'' 'hill'. But if this identification is incorrect, ''Cocklaw'' on its own would more obviously be an entirely Old English word, combining ''cocc'' 'cock' and ''hlǣw'' 'hill'.Bethany Fox, 'The P-Celtic Place-Names of North-East England and South-East Scotland', The Heroic Age, 10 (2007), http://www.heroicage.org/issues/10/fox.html (appendix at http://www.heroicage.org/issues/10/fox-appendix.html).

History

Low Cocklaw is situated close to the ancient borough boundary of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which ran north–south at this point, and now forms part of the border between England and Scotland. A road or track runs along this part and, in the past, was a route allowing horse-drawn wagons travelling between England and Scotland to by-pass the tolls through Berwick. There were fords at the crossings of the rivers Tweed and Whiteadder and the wagons would need extra pulling-power to haul them up the hill north of the Whiteadder. Local tradition is that Low Cocklaw derives its name from this; a "law" being the local word for a hill and a "cock-horse" being a heavy draught horse. Hence the farm nearest the river, from which a draught horse could be hired, was Low Cocklaw and, for the next stage of the haul, the farm higher up the hill to the north was High Cocklaw. Further north again, on the other side of the hill on the same route, there is a Cocklaw Farm above Ayton village, which would have provided the same service for wagons travelling south from Scotland to England. Low Cocklaw is no longer a farm. It was converted into housing in the 1980s. On 6 July 2020 it had a population of 16, made up of 9 households.

Governance

Low Cocklaw is in the parliamentary constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

References

Villages in Northumberland Northumberland places with etymologically Brittonic names {{Northumberland-geo-stub