Why do London place names make so much use of the letter ‘H’? Greater London has around a hundred districts or localities with names beginning with that letter, and seven boroughs. It’s mostly to do with the city’s pastoral, Anglo-Saxon roots. Notwithstanding the significance of the Thames and its tributaries to London’s development, and the urbanising influence of the Romans and Normans, most of the communities that have coalesced into the metropolis grew out of medieval farmsteads.

And the Old English language (also called Anglo-Saxon) is heaving with rural words starting with ‘H’ – particularly ‘ham’ (the origin of the word ‘home’), which used to mean a collection of dwellings, often a farm. There was also ‘hamm’ – a place in a river bend. The country topography of heaths, hedges, hooks and hollows, and hills and other high ground, played a leading role in giving London its h-related place names, while a ‘hatch’ was a gateway into a wood or park and a ‘hide’ was a piece of land large enough to support a farming family: roughly 120 acres. Other contributory terms with now-lost meanings included ‘hæse’ – land overgrown with brushwood, ‘hanger’ – a wood on the side of a steep hill, ‘hyrne’ – an angled corner of land, and ‘halh/hale’ – a nook.