Morthen is a hamlet in

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham. In N ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, lying between

Brampton-en-le-Morthen Brampton-en-le-Morthen is a small dormitory village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Thurcroft, in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, Rotherham district lying to the south of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. In 1911, the ...

and

Laughton-en-le-Morthen Laughton en le Morthen is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham lying to the south of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, and its main attraction is the All Saints Church with its tower and spire of 185 feet. The ...

David Hey David G. Hey (18 July 1938 – 14 February 2016) was an English historian, and was an authority on surnames and the local history of Yorkshire. Hey was the president of the British Association for Local History, and was a published author of seve ...

, ''Medieval South Yorkshire'' The population of the hamlet as taken at the 2011 Census was less than 100. Details are included in the civil parish of

Thurcroft Thurcroft is a village and civil parish situated south-east of Rotherham in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. From 1902 to 1991, it was a mining community. It has a population of 5,296, increasing to 6,900 at ...

Former St James Chapel (geograph 5630307)

Morthen lay in the

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

district also named "Morthen". This had already ceased to function by the

Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conque ...

, but gave its name to several villages in the area. In the early Mediaeval period,

Aston Aston is an area of inner Birmingham, England. Located immediately to the north-east of Central Birmingham, Aston constitutes a ward within the metropolitan authority. It is approximately 1.5 miles from Birmingham City Centre. History Aston wa ...

and Dinnington were also described as being "-in-Morthen". The name of the hamlet originates in the

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

for "moorland assembly". The assembly probably met in a meadow lying next to the ridge running between Upper Whiston and the hamlet of Morthen. However, another plausible source for the name of Morthen is offered in the book "Athelstan" by Paul Hill, in which he states Morthen means "Slaughter Field". Given the proximity of a nearby stump of a Saxon cross, which is said by Guy Points in his "Yorkshire. A Gazetteer of Anglo Saxon and Viking Sites" to commemorate the epic Battle of Brunanburgh in 937 would tie the cross and the name together.

References

External links

{{Commons category-inline, Morthen Geography of the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham Hamlets in South Yorkshire Ancient subdivisions of Yorkshire

See also

References

External links