shrogg

c.1460 I haue soght with my dogys All horbery shrogys. In 1697-8, James Jackson of Nether Shitlington was ambushed by two thieves on the common high roade near Brighouse and he told the magistrates that afterwards other two men came out of a little shroge or wood and joined his attackers. Easther thought that it might usually have referred to woodland ‘on a bank side’ and certainly in the Huddersfield area that fits well with the place-name. A particularly good example is Dogkennel Shrogg recorded in 1871. The wood in this case is very narrow but it covers the slopes on either side of a beck which divides Kirkheaton and Whitley. The same meaning may be implicit in 1763 in the Brow or Shrogg Close in Esholt. It was actually a common element, but found only in minor place-names, so it has received little attention. Smith listed more than a dozen examples in the West Riding and although much of the evidence was late several names are on record from the seventeenth century, e.g. Shroggywood in Hoyland Swaine and Shrog in Thornhill. Most of the names noted are in the southern half of the West Riding and the adjoining counties of Lancashire and Nottinghamshire, which may mean that it was simply a regional variant of ‘scrog’. This has a longer history and it is found over a wider area, including Cumberland, north Yorkshire and Scotland: Catterlen Wood in Cumberland was boscus de Caterlenscrok in 1292 and scrogscugh was a Sedbergh name in 1479. In view of that it is curious to find that Long Tongue Scrog Lane in Kirkheaton is only a few hundred yards from Dogkennel Shrog. Since no early references to this name have been found it is possible that clerks or map-makers will have been responsible for the ‘educated’ spelling. This particular ‘shrog’ is again on a bank side, named after the adjoining field ‘Long Tongue’.