Catterick, North Yorkshire
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Catterick, sometimes Catterick Village to distinguish it from the nearby Catterick Garrison, is a village in North Yorkshire. It dates back to Roman times, when Cataractonium was a Roman fort protecting the crossing of the Great North Road over the River Swale.
Ptolemy's Geographia of c.150 mentions it as a landmark to locate the 24th clime.[1]
Catterick is thought to be the site of the Battle of Catraeth (c.598) mentioned in the poem Y Gododdin. This was a historic battle between Celtic British or Brythonic kingdoms and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia.[2] Catraeth was then a seat of the British kingdom of Rheged.
In later times, it prospered as a coaching town where travellers up the Great North Road would stop overnight and refresh themselves and their horses; today's Angel Inn was once a coaching inn. Saint Anne's Church overlooks the village and has Norman roots.
At the 2001 Census, Catterick Village had 2743 residents, most of whom work in the adjacent Garrison, in farming, or in the local towns of Richmond, Darlington, Northallerton or on Teesside. Previously RAF Catterick the airfield to the south of the village was transferred to the Army and is now Marne Barracks, named after the site of two significant battles of World War I.
[edit] Etymology
"Cataractonium" looks like a Latin/Greek mixture meaning "place of a waterfall", but on the Ptolemy world map it is spelt Κατουρακτονιον, which looks like Celtic for "[place of] battle ramparts".
[edit] References
- ^ Stevenson, Edward Luther. Trans. and ed. 1932. Claudius Ptolemy: The Geography. New York Public Library. Reprint: Dover, 1991, Latinized English translation, Book II Chapter 2, web edition at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/_Texts/Ptolemy/2/2*.html#Caturactonium retrieved on August 16, 2006
- ^ Ford, David Nash 1998 "Early British Kingdoms" - "Timeline of the Early British Kingdoms 410 AD-598 AD" retrieved from http://britannia.com/history/ebk/ebktime1.html on August 16, 2006
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