to refer to Domesday, where he would have found that all such
descriptive titles as "Church town," or " Town by the Watery Gill,"
or " Town by the Hill of Oaks," or other of a like kind, were utterly
excluded ; the real name of the place appearing there as " Eghiston "
and " Egheston," that is to say, as a purely personal one — the abode,
or " ton," of " Eghi," or "Eggi" — the primitive owner and occupier of
the spot. Nor is this by any means the only local instance of such
change, or corruption, of place-names. For, curiously enough, a
second and exactly parallel transformation of a personal, into a
descriptive, appellation occurs some few miles lower down the Tees,
on the Durham side, in the case of a village which, within living
memory, was universally known as '* Egglescliffe," but has now during
the last few years, and mainly through the instrumentality of the
railway authorities, been still further corrupted into " Eaglescliife,"
though the ancient form was " Eggesclive," i.e. the cliff of Eggi —
precisely as in the case before us.
