Weston-super-Mare, Clacton-on-Sea and Southend-on-Sea

Weston-super-Mare

It rained heavily yesterday, but it didn't stop six of us from having a family lunch of fish and chips at the end the Grand Pier at Weston-super-Mare (left).

Known colloquially as Weston-super-Mud, it was very muddy indeed in the rain. It got me thinking about the apparent pretentiousness of adding a Latin suffix to the name 'Weston'.

Southend-on-Sea

As an inhabitant of Westbury-sub-Mendip I understand that, in the early 20th century, such suffixes were added to make life easier for postal workers in sorting and deliverin
g mail, long before the invention of post-codes. So is it the same with places like Weston-suoer-Mare, Clacton-on-Sea and Southend-on-Sea?

I used to think this a not very cunning plan for estuary based resorts like Weston, Southend and Burnham-on-Sea to pretend they were proper seaside resorts. But my research has made me think otherwise.

Getting there

Clacton-on-Sea

Unlike Weston and Southend, Clacton really is on the Essex coast and has really sandy beaches. The 'on-Sea' was origina
lly added because there was a time (before the railways) when the only easy way to get there was via the sea.

The arrival of the railways also meant made Southend accessible to trippers from the East end of London. And, in case anyone pointed out that it was on the Thames estuary and not the proper sea, they built the longest pier in the world out into the 'sea'.

Weston

As for Weston-super-Mare and the apparent pretentiousness of adding a Latin suffix part of the problem was that Weston is a very common place-name, with about 60 in the UK, 30 in the USA and, in the diocese of Bath and Wells there are at least five.

Fans of an early Blackadder series may be as intrigued as I was to discover that the most plausible explanation for the Latin is that it came from an early bishop of Bath and Wells.

The earliest known reference to Weston-super-Mare is in the register of Ralph of Shrewsbury, bishop of Bath and Wells, dated 1348. And in the pre-reformation church, of course, Latin was the common language of priests and bishops.....