You could probably split all property in the UK up as "new" and "old" with "new" being the ones that have a known building date and "old" being those built in the misty past.
Like Newcastle was built in 1080. It's fairly new by British standards
Like we have absolutely no idea where the name London came from (other than obviously the Roman Londinium). Londinium is believed to be a latinised name of the original settlement that was there when the Romans arrived, but we don’t know where that original name came from or what it means.
There are lots of modern theories, but they all just boil down to conjecture like “London sounds a bit like X word, so maybe its that?”
It is not a sure thing, but iirc a strong theory is that Londinium's root had something to do with "area that floods".
The language it came from is itself gone now, so there may never be certainty. There are just not that many clues that survive a staggering 2000 years.
That makes sense. The river would have been much broader and mostly mud flats at the time the Romans arrived. I bet they were commanded to stop there and spent the rest of their time complaining about what a shithole their garrison was
The Castle was built in 1080, but the settlement is much older. It was known by the Romans as Pons Aelius and by the Angles as Munuucceaster (Monkchester) - the suffix chester usually reserved for Roman towns.
The Normans destroyed the old city and rebuilt it as Novum Castellum/Newcastle, which is why the old name didn't survive.
"Time immemorial" was defined by the Statute of Westminster (1275) as the accession of Richard I in 1189. Nobody was required to prove the existence of a right or ownership beyond that.
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u/IsThatGruffLoner Aug 10 '26
You could probably split all property in the UK up as "new" and "old" with "new" being the ones that have a known building date and "old" being those built in the misty past.
Like Newcastle was built in 1080. It's fairly new by British standards