Common Dunghill? really!!

[jillruss]

I just found an entry for one of my ancestors in the Aylesbury UK Poll Book for 1818. Under the'residence' column, his says Common Dunghill!!!

I was pretty sure none of my ancestors were aristocracy - but, really? Common Dunghill? I wonder if its still there today or whether it has changed its name to spare the poor residents their blushes??

 

[Ruskie]

It gets a couple of mentions here:
http://www.bucksfhs.org.uk/images/stories/origins/vol05_03.pdf
(seems like something to do with ducks)

[stanmapstone]

Common Dunghill appears to be the name of a street or place. From the Bucks Herald - Saturday 24 March 1838, under "Aylesbury Improvements"
and from the Bucks Herald - Saturday 14 February 1835
Stan

[Treetotal]

This really made me laugh...I have an ancestor who lived in "Sewer lane"   
Carol

[stanmapstone]

The Cat and Bagpipes, Common Dunghill. Apparently Cat in this instance refers to Scottish "caterans"
see https://commonculture.org.uk/people-the-caterans/

Stan

[Ruskie]

Stan’s second article sounds like a comedy sketch. 

You couldn’t make that up.

In my link above it mentions the location of Common Dunghill as being at the “junction of White Hill and Oxford Road”:

Castle Street and Hill was the main road in from Oxford and its short length contained 9 public houses, including the Black Horse, the Plume of Feathers and the Half Moon. The road was lowered to reduce the steepness of the ascent. The Oxford road near the Friarage was in a very poor state and almost impassable. This area was generally filthy from the keeping of ducks, which were in every room of the cottages and in pens adjacent. They contributed their muck to the Common Dunghill at the junction of White Hill and Oxford Road.

There is some argument about the origin of this name. Gibbs says it is not a communal dung hill, since manure was too valuable to dump, and tries to make a fanciful link with the Dungeon Hill that was attached to the Castle. However, there is no evidence of a Castle in Castle Street either (it was earlier Catt Street). All the reports do show that the dunghill was in fact a stinking morass of semi- liquid filth. The whole area was similarly afflicted by filth and neglect, so that many of the highways were blocked and the streets bordered by filthy ditches.

the footways were bad and neglected in Kingsbury and a morass knee-deep in mud in Walton Street. There is a wide gaping ditch all the way down the west side of this street and by the Bear Inn a receptacle for all the filth of the whole of Walton street. The Upper Hundreds all down the Bierton road to Dropshort is a public eyesore. The ditch bounding the Friarage at the part known as the Iron Rails, from Rickford's Hill to the bridge at Brook Cottage, holds the refuse of a poor and thickly populated district. More objectionable are the cess pools and duck ponds attached to the duckeries there, from which this part of the town is appropriately called the Common Dunghill. The road from the Nags Head to Buckingham road is almost impassable to traffic.


They didn’t hold back. 

A quick look at a map did not find it though I did find the streets mentioned. I wonder if might have been a local name for the area and not marked on any maps. Someone else might have more luck tracking it down. 

[stanmapstone]

The Cat and Bagpipes, Common Dunghill. Apparently Cat in this instance refers to Scottish "caterans"
see https://commonculture.org.uk/people-the-caterans/

Stan

This is the explanation in "The Dictionary of Pub Names", but "The Cat and Bagpipes" seems to have been a fairly common pub name from the 18th century, especially in Ireland the sign being a cat playing the bagpipes. Nothing to do with Scotland.

Stan

[Lisajb]

Not 1 Dunhill Mansions, Putney, is it? As in Blackadder? 

[pinefamily]

And you say Australians have strange place names?