cockshoot

1) A broad glade in a wood, through which woodcocks might ‘shoot’, so as to be caught in nets stretched across the opening.

1473-4 with a cokshote in the said parke, North Duffield

1576-7 ‘for felling of wood in a cockshott 3d’, Beverley. Reaney quotes examples of Cockshoot as a by-name from the late thirteenth century and it was well established in Sussex in the poll tax of 1379. McKinley noted its frequency in east Lancashire from the fourteenth century but disputed the traditional explanation of its meaning, saying that it referred in that region to a particular type of agricultural land. Be that as it may the surname survives almost exclusively in those Yorkshire and Lancashire towns which lie on either side of the Pennines, in the neighbourhood of Blackburn, Burnley, Bradford and Keighley.

dates 1473-1474 1576-1577

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