Our Name

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“High marks in the competition of curious local mispronunciations of place names may fairly be claimed for the case of Waldringfield, near Ipswich. If you do in Suffolk as the Suffolkers do, you must call it “Wunuerf’l,”which is also their pronunciation of “wonderful,” a favourite Suffolk word”. – Pronunciation, according to the Ipswich Evening Star of 23rd September 1904

Here we gather together references to the name of our village and take a look at its history.

The name Waldringfield is first documented in the Will of Bishop Theodred in 955. ¹⁾ Theodred – Electronic Sawyer – S1526 Will of Bishop Theodred. Next, the 11C Domesday Book describes “Waldringafelda” and “Waldringafelda Minima” or Lesser Waldringfield.  After this time all sources use minor spelling variations and the lesser variant disappears. (Cross Ref |14C section) Waldringfield Heath is unlikely, as Arnott suggested, to be Lesser Waldringfield as it does not appear until the 19C. No other settlements called Waldringfield have been found in the English speaking countries or in Europe. There is a Waldringfield road in Basildon but that’s a new town.

The sources, summarised below,  agree that the name consists of a personal element of ‘Waldhere‘, a connector ‘inga’ and the geographical ‘field’. Arnott suggests that the ‘inga’ element refers to the settlement of a particular group of people as opposed to unconnected individuals.

Scarfe makes the observation ²⁾ Scarfe, Norman. Suffolk in the Middle Ages : Studies in Places and Place-Names, the Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, Saints, Mummies, and Crosses, Domesday Book, and Chronicles of Bury Abbey. Boydell, 2007. that we are the only Suffolk -field that is on relatively dry soil. He also mentions that -fields were often associated with Roman settlements, there may have been one at Martlesham, and used as fuel supplies for kilns, baths etc.  The English Place-Name Society ³⁾ -fields – English Place-Name Society – The University of Nottingham.  shows that there are 521 settlement Names in Suffolk. Of these 107 are -tons, 100-hams, and 34 -fields. Inspection of the soil type map reveals that all the other village-fields are on clay soil with only ours on sandy soil which is worthy of note.

Wald in place-names can refer to wood or forest often referring to cleared, open upland ground according to Ekwall.  Waldingfield near Sudbury, for example, he describes as the field of the dwellers by the wood.  Our Waldringfield isn’t upland and the Wald does not appear to have this meaning according to the above sources. Rather the Wald element comes from a personal name Waldhere, an Anglo Saxon name and form of “Walter”. It is a compound of a wald element meaning “might, power, authority” and here signifying “army leader, commander, warrior” ⁴⁾ Wald – Wiktionary.Org Presumably the wald element in Raedwald has the same meaning.

The personal name connection makes the name of greater interest than most nearby villages which are named after a local farm holder or a geographical feature. We don’t know who Waldhere was so the three suggestions that follow are speculation. The real story, that we’ll probably never know, may well be less interesting.

WLD SF-466067 Early-Medieval Sword Pommel CC Licence attribution

• Bawdsey and Hemley may also be of interest as they relate to a personal name. The estuary is by definition the route from the sea and an avenue of attack. Bawdsey (Baldhere’s Island) would, together with Walton Castle (a Roman structure so there at the time), defend the entrance and Waldringfield has a commanding position half-way up.river Hemley also fits this pattern as it then sat at a branch in the channel. Hemley is said to derive from Helma’s Lea where Helma signifies ‘protector’. ⁵⁾Helma – see Wikipedia Germanic names. The name, however, has only one element ⁶⁾Elements – see Anglo-Saxon Monothematic Names and may be of lower status.  Were Baldhere, Helma and Waldhere military leaders commanding key positions at some time? If this were the case then they probably did this from the early days of settlement in the 6C which makes the name about 1500 years old in the days of one of the early Anglo Saxon rulers well before Raedwald. We could fantasise that it was Waldhere or one of his men whose Early-Medieval Sword Pommel and parts of a dagger were found in the village. The pommel dates from between 700 and 900.
• There was a Bishop of London called Waldhere in the late 7C ⁷⁾ Waldhere (bishop). 2019. Wikipedia who had dealings with the King of the East Saxons in 695. ⁸⁾ Waldhere dealings – Hunt, W. (1899) Waldhere Sidney Lee (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900.Volume 59. This may have been King Ealdwulf ⁹⁾King Ealdwulf Wikipedia The role of a Bishop in that time extended into the realms of politics and warfare and this was a politically turbulent era. Bishop Waldhere was a key intermediary and it’s quite possible that gifts of land might have been made to him of which our village was part. This was nearly a Century later than King Raedwald, who reigned from c. 599 to c. 624, so there wasn’t a direct connection between King and Bishop. If Bishop Waldhere was connected with the village in late 7C then it ties in with the will of Bishop Theodred (an interesting character in his own right) in the mid 10C.
• There is an Anglo Saxon poem called Waldere ¹⁰⁾ Waldere Poem. Wikipedia.  telling heroic tales of Waldere and Hildegyth, their love, crimes and battle wielding his great sword Mimming (not upon Hildegyth) but all ends happily. However, this dates from about the 10C has no ‘h’ and too grand to refer to anyone connected with our humble village. Could the sword pommel above be from Mimming?!

Waldhere poem fragment

So, the name is Anglo Saxon, perhaps 1300 to 1500 years old and different in form to most nearby villages. It also stands out from the thirty-three other -fields in Suffolk. Beyond that, we can only guess but there’s a lot more to the name than we thought at first.