The Coggarth
Introduction
The photograph on this page of The Coggarth by Bob Harvey as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
The Coggarth
Image: © Bob Harvey Taken: 20 Jan 2019
The house at the end of Image has a most unusual name. "The Coggarth" Now, I am guessing here, but we are in the Danelaw, where a Garth is an enclosed bit of land, from the Old Norse garðr "yard". Cog is another thing altogether. Ignoring all the associations with gearwheels, this might mean a hill or high ground, or it might mean an act of cheating at cards. Or it might mean a protruding tenon in a wooden frame. But far more interestingly, a "Cog" is a dialect word for a Cuckoo, (pronounced with a vowel half way between 'o' and 'u' and probably onomatopoeic). One source links it with "gowk", also a Cuckoo. There are several places in Lincolnshire known as Cuckoobush, which have legends of simple-minded folk building a fence around a bush to restrain the Cuckoo, often because they are enchanted by the bird's "beautiful song". Perhaps the Garth here was for a Cuckoo too? I have no idea at all why this is called Coggarth - which has been a surname in the past. But I really like the Cuckoo idea.
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Image Location
Latitude
52.929791
Longitude
-0.413201