Hambledonian Article
Jun-July 2026
Speltham Hill and Speltham Down
Hambledon in Place Names
Let’s deal with the ‘Down’ part first. Steve Wilkins claims that there was no Speltham Down when he grew up; just Speltham Hill. A few years ago Brigid Goldsmith recalled sledging on Speltham Hill in the winter of ’63. Asked about ‘Hill’ she replied oh yes, it was always Speltham Hill, never Speltham Down. Similarly, in a recent obituary of Olive Moon, her daughter tells how she and her mother spent a lot of time walking up Speltham Hill and the surrounding footpaths. It was great because, when we had snow, we could go tobogganing on the hill and then just run into my grandparents’ Taylor’s cottage to get warm and dry. [George and Dolly Taylor lived in Dalkeith, now Shrub Cottage, on Speltham Hill.]
If further evidence were needed, Kelly’s Directory for 1911 says of Hambledon: The country is richly wooded and very picturesque. Speltham Hill is a favourite resort of picnic parties from Portsmouth and other places in the summer season. My emphasis. No mention of a down. Seems like Steve and Brigid are right. I suspect the National Trust coined the name Speltham Down in 1984, when the land was bought by the village and given to the Trust. They needed a name for their new property, after all.
Within the parish of Hambledon, Ordnance survey maps of both the current day and the last two centuries mark Windmill Down, Chidden Down, West End Down, Teglease Down, Home Down and Broad Halfpenny Down; the last one not at the cricket ground but about half a mile south. It’s significant that they do not mark a Speltham Down.
Coates (Place-Names of Hampshire) tells us ‘down’ comes from Old English ‘dūn’ meaning hill, applied typically to ridges and other hills with a top suitable for a settlement-site … . With the possible exception of Home Down the six downs mentioned above are all named at or very close to the top of the hill on the OS map or, in the case of Chidden Down, a ridge. The top of Speltham Down, if it can be said to have any top at all, is near Rushmere; but in reality that is just the start of a broad, gently-rising ridge which peaks two miles away at Broad Halfpenny Down. So the escarpment of National Trust land which we call Speltham Down has little or no claim to the title ‘down’.
Incidentally, Portsdown Hill was formerly known simply as Ports Down; that is the hill overlooking the port. This would refer to the Roman port, a feature of sufficient importance that it lends its name not only to the hill (Ports Down) but also the Roman fort (Port Chester) and the harbour entrance (Ports Mouth). ‘Portsdown Hill’ is thus a tautology – ‘Ports Hill Hill’.
‘Speltham’ is more difficult as it doesn’t feature in any place-name books I’ve seen. It’s reasonable in this instance to assume the ‘ham’ element is ‘homestead’ or ‘farm’. ‘Ham’ can mean ‘village’ too, but if that were the case here we should be looking for a lost village, only the name of which survives. I’ve never heard any suggestion of one.
That leaves the ‘spelt’ element to consider. I consulted Professor Richard Coates, author of Place-Names in Hampshire. Part of his reply was The only remotely similar name I know is that of Spelthorne hundred in Middlesex (near Ashford), which means ‘speech thorn’, i.e. a tree where the hundred met and talk was done. I suppose [Speltham] might descend from a duplicate, but the evidence isn’t there.
The ’t’ in Spelthorne clearly belongs to the ‘thorne’ element; old English ‘spell’ meaning ‘speech’ or ‘discourse’. So could our ‘Speltham’ originally have been ‘Spellham’ which over time acquired an excrescent ’t’? [There, I said I’d use that word again!] Beside Spelthorne there are three other similar examples: Spellbrook in Herts (speech brook), Spelhoe Hundred in Northants (speech hoe from ‘hōh, a hill-spur), and Spellow in Lancashire (spell-hlāw, which that particular author translates as ‘moot ridge’).
One other place-name similar to Speltham is Speldhurst in Kent, which means a wooded hill (the ‘hurst’ element) where split wood (likely shingles) can be found found. So could Speltham be a farm or homestead where shingles were made? That feels unlikely. It would also require spelt and speld to be the same, and there is no evidence for this.
Sticking for the moment with ‘spelt’ the shorter OED gives two meanings: firstly as a species of grain related to wheat. Spelt fell out of favour, but is once again fashionable as a healthy alternative to modern strains of wheat. Unfortunately Richard Coates remarked I’ve never met the wheat-word in any other English place-name, great or small.
The second definition is a dialect verb to husk or pound (grain) or to bruise or split (especially beans). It’s tempting to make a connection between this and the windmill that sat at the top of the hill until sometime last century; but that really is quite a leap!
So the contenders are spelt (the grain), spelt (to husk, pound, bruise or split), a farm where shingles were split, or a farm where discussions took place. All seem plausible, however there are no examples to support a ’spelt’ derivation and the ‘spelt-speld’ link has no justification. That leaves only a homestead where discussions were held. There isn’t direct evidence, but at least we have four other examples with the same broad meaning.
In conclusion ‘Speltham’ most likely means ‘speech farm’, i.e. a homestead where discussion took place. Quite possibly that would refer to the Hambledon Hundred conducting its business. What is now called Speltham Down isn’t really a down and was previously known as Speltham Hill.
JOHN THORNTON, HISTORY GROUP
A footnote on pronunciation. For most of the time I’ve lived here I’ve heard ‘Spel-tham’, the ‘th’ being soft as in Thursday, but a hard ’t’ seems to be creeping in – ‘Spelt-ham’. If the derivation from ‘spell-ham’ is correct the excrescent ’t’ would have been added later and pronounced ‘Spelt-ham’; making the hard ’t’ historically correct.