Vocabulary
Who knows? Maybe I will make this a regular feature of this humble Yorkshire blog - simply pausing to focus upon particular words. This evening I am thinking about the word "glebe". It is a term I have often come across on my wanderings - Glebe Cottage, Glebe Lane, Glebe Woods, Glebe Farm, Glebe Common. Glebe House. The word is all over the place but what does it mean? In the middle ages, glebe land was land that had been earmarked to supplement the income of the parish priest. The term was derived from the Old French word glèbe which itself came from Latin: gleba or glaeba meaning "clod, land, soil". It is likely that the term entered usage in England soon after the Norman Conquest of the late eleventh century. Different parishes had different amounts of glebe land. Sometimes there would be entire farms or large patches of woodland. Please don't imagine that the priests actually farmed glebe land with their own hands. Mostly they would rent it out to te...