ironhard

1) In the Honley area in the late fourteenth centry, this was an inherited nickname, the interpretation is uncertain.

1341-2 ‘Henry Irenhard one burgage freely’, Almondbury

1372 Adam Yrenehard, Meltham

1379 Henricus Irenherde, Honley. It was literally ‘hard as iron’, extremely hard, but the interpretation remains uncertain. The word is on record in the Old English period in Beowulf where the definition given above seems applicable, but it was also used of the herbs Vervain and Knapweed, named apparently from the toughness of their stalks, and this might have given rise to some kind of ‘occupational’ nickname. Cameron found le Longeirenhard as a thirteenth-century field-name in Hognaston, Derbyshire.

dates 1200-1299 1341-1342 1379

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