1) Wet, boggy ground where willows and alders flourished; land lying partly or seasonally under water.
Such areas were part of a managed landscape in which they had special functions, and the precise meaning varied from one region to another: 1411-2 harundines [reeds] in lez kerres, Eastoft
1540 totam piscariam ... de Dame et de lez Carres, Selby
1573 John Bower for his house being open upon the carr we fine him iiijd, Doncaster
1619-21 thence west unto a carre or flashe of water, Skelton. The carrs were contrasted with ‘hard land’: 1642 In a moist yeare hardlande-grasse prooveth better then Carres or Ing-growndes, Elmswell
1699 I sett the fence ... & separated all the carrs from the hard land, Scalm Park. It is an element in numerous minor place-names, mostly as a generic [kjarr], from c.1200. For example, 1284 in tota illa placia bosci et marisci que vocatur comun ker, Bolton by Bowland.