jan 1, 1576 - cockshoot

Description:

A broad glade in a wood, through which woodcocks might ‘shoot’, so as to be caught in nets stretched across the opening. 1473-4 <i>with a cokshote in the said parke</i>, North Duffield (YRS69/35); 1576-7 ‘for felling of wood in a <i>cockshott</i> 3d’, Beverley (YRS84/7). Reaney quotes examples of Cockshoot as a by-name from the late thirteenth century and it was well established in Sussex in the poll tax of 1379. McKinley noted its frequency in east Lancashire from the fourteenth century but disputed the traditional explanation of its meaning, saying that it referred in that region to a particular type of agricultural land (ESS4/201). Be that as it may the surname survives almost exclusively in the towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire which lie on either side of the Pennines in the neighbourhood of Blackburn, Burnley, Bradford and Keighley.

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