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Gerling 2

Name

Summary

Gerling 2 had a moderate estate in Dorset TRE assessed at 6 hides and with a value of £3.

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Holder 1066

Shire	Phil. ref.	Vill	DB Spelling	Holder 1066	Lord 1066	Tenant-in-Chief 1086	1086 Subtenant	Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value	Conf.	Show on Map
Shire Dorset	Phil. ref. 55,16	Vill Turners Puddle	DB Spelling Gerling	Holder 1066 Gerling 'of Puddle'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 unnamed wife of Hugh fitzGrip	1086 Subtenant Walter the thunderer	Fiscal Value 6.00	1066 Value 3.00	1086 Value 4.00	Confidence B	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Gerling 2’s estate was at Turners Puddle, straddling the valley of the River Piddle about 6½ miles to the north-west of Wareham in Dorset.

Gerling 2 was the only person of that name recorded in DB either TRE or in 1086.  The presence of someone with a Continental Germanic name and a relatively large estate in pre-Conquest England is unusual but not exceptional, and such individuals were often associated with the Church or royal administration (or both).  If Hall (2000: 14-16) is correct to see Turners Puddle as a part of the parochia of a minster at Bere Regis, then perhaps Gerling was connected with the minster community there.

By 1086 Gerling 2’s estate was in the hands of Walter, a subtenant of Hugh fitzGrip’s wife, and for whom the Exon entry (56b4) supplies the Latin byname tonitrus ‘thunder’.  In its Old French form toner, this byname became a manorial affix to the name of the estate, resulting in its modern form of Turners Puddle (Mills 1977: 294-5).

Bibliography

Hall 2000: T. A. Hall, Minster Churches in the Dorset Landscape, BAR British Series 204 (Oxford, 2000)

Mills 1977: A. D. Mills, The Place-Names of Dorset: Part I (Cambridge, 1977)