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Baker, John, “The *Meresǣte of Northwest Shropshire”, Notes and Queries 62:2 (2015): 207–211.

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Article
“The *Meresǣte of Northwest Shropshire”
Periodical
Notes and Queries 62:2 (2015)
Volume
62
Pages
207–211
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Abstract (cited)
IN Domesday Book, the vills listed in the northwest of Shropshire, roughly the area that became Oswestry Hundred, are grouped into a district, or hundred, called Merset(e). The name is not recorded in other sources, and is traditionally taken to be a compound of OE (ge)mǣre ‘boundary’ and the plural of sǣte or sǣta both meaning ‘dweller’, thus naming a folk-group called ‘the boundary dwellers’. This interpretation is formally acceptable, and is perhaps strengthened by the location of Maesbury and Maesbrook within the hundred. Margaret Gelling took the first probably and the second possibly to have OE (ge)mǣre as first element, and at Domesday the hundred called Mersete apparently belonged to Maesbury. The motivation for a name meaning ‘boundary dwellers’ would be the position of their territory on the Anglo-Welsh frontier, where it is traversed by both Wat’s Dyke and Offa’s Dyke; but it is more problematic than is sometimes acknowledged. For one thing, the putative *Mǣresǣte seem to have been one of a number of sǣte groups situated along the same border, discussed at length by several commentators. Any one of these might have been named with equal justification from their position on that frontier. To put it another way, a name *Mǣresǣte, if it was understood to mean ‘boundary dwellers’, would not have distinguished that community very effectively from several others in the same region. It should be noted that the dykes here coincide with an impressive geographical boundary between the North Shropshire Plain and the foothills of the Welsh mountains, and that the boundary in the area of Mersete may therefore have been more striking or distinctive than elsewhere in Shropshire.
(source: first paragraphs)
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Contributors
Dennis Groenewegen
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June 2015, last updated: January 2019
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