Up on the hill

They say there is a prominent hill in Cumbria that the local Britons called Penn, which meant “hill” in their language at the time.

When the first Angles or Saxons appeared, they apparently asked around to know what the name of the hill was and were told that it was called Penn. One of their own words for hill was torr, so they called the place Torr Pen, meaning Penn hill.

Years passed as they are wont to do and a later tribe of Anglo-Saxons took over the area, learned the local hill was called Torrpen. Using another old English word for a hill they started referring to it as Torrpen Hoh, meaning Torrpen hill.

In modern times (well, the 17th century) a Thomas Denton from the English Place Name Society remarked on a Torpenhow Hall in that location and referred to the site it stood on as Torpenhow Hill.