On 08/04/2009, A Lee <alee231@btinternet.com> wrote: > Does anyone have any idea of the meaning of the word Collestu/Cullestuwe or > similar? From the context it is the name of a street in Lichfield, Staffs. From: mjcl111@googlemail.com <<Would this have anything to do with a stew pond where fish were stored prior to eating? The Colle being the name of a person or locality?>> ________________________________________ The "colle/culle" part could have a number of meanings. As Martyn says, it might have been a personal name (Cola and names like it were common in the late Anglo-Saxon period and for a while after the conquest), or on the other hand there were several Middle English words similar to colle/culle which variously meant 'cool', 'coal or charcoal', 'barrel', 'tub or bucket', and 'rump, bottom or, harrumph, arse'. The Middle English Dictionary gives several meanings for "steu(e), steuwe, stieu, stiue, stiwe, stu(e), stuwe". 1. "A small pond, esp. one stocked with edible fish" (as Martyn says), 2. "a cauldron or cooking pot" (from which our modern meaning of a casserole-type food, I suppose) and 3. "a hot-air or steam bath; a room containing this, a bathhouse", from which it also acquired the meaning of 4. "a brothel" (though usually in the plural form - "stews"). The famous brothel district in Southwark was known as the Stews - I wonder whether Colle Stuwe might have been Lichfield's red light district? Or perhaps just a street with a bath-house. I leave it to you to consider the ways in which the various possible meanings of 'colle' might be combined with 'bath-house or brothel'. Then again Cole was quite a common stream and river name - was there a Colebrook in Lichfield, perhaps? If so then the street might have been named after a fish-pond fed by it. Once you've assembled all the etymological possibilities you have to look at the historical context to see if one of them fits better than the rest. Matt Tompkins