1) In general use for the buttocks of an animal or the hinder end of an object.
1615 to be whipped at a cartes arse, Askrigg
1642 take out theire forkes and rakes out of the Waines arse, Elmswell. It was formerly not uncommon in compound minor place-names, mostly pejorative: 1342 ‘a piece of … land and wood called Barherse in Oxspring’
1513 ‘one and a half roods lying on Shytynhers’, East Markham
1594 two closes … called the Deepe Arse, Midgley. The combination ‘bare arse’ was frequent and it first occurs in an undated thirteenth-century charter: ‘also two perches of land … reaching from Barherhs to the hedge’, Clayton West. It later became ‘Bearers’ as the name of a locality on Kaye Lane in Almondbury.