button to main menu  Gents Mag 1755 p.272

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Gentleman's Magazine 1755 p.272
Mr URBAN,
THE first conception, in investigating the original of the names Maiden-Castle, Maiden-Way, and Maiden-Hold, in the county of Westmoreland, in answer to your correspondent's quere, p.198, is this, that the first and last places being apparently places of strength, as may be judged by their names, which import a fortification of some kind, might be so called from their impregnability, as never having been taken by an enemy; just as we read in Hall's Chronicles, that over the one of the gates of the city of Tournay, Temp. Henry VIII. was written Jamais ton ne a perdue ton pucellage, Thou hast never lost thy maidenhead. And as the motto of Waterford in Ireland formerly imported, Intacta manet Waterfordia, where intacta means virginea, as Hor. Od. i. 7. and Juv. vi. 163, & annot Ovid Art. Am. i. 677. But then this interpretation is not so applicable to a road, or the Maiden-way, the other place mentioned in the query, wherefore admitting, upon the suggestion of the proposer, that all three places were known to the Romans, I rather incline to think, that the first part of these compounds may be of a British original; that the ancient Britons in their time had been settled in these places; that the Romans, upon theur arrival, finding them proper stations, and ready to their hands, continued to make use of them, and retained the
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