The Running Well

 interesting place  Add category

 Upload a photo

Place of Secret Council:
It has often been suggested that the place-name 'Runewell' derives from two components - 'rune' and 'welle'. The latter is the Old English word for a spring or stream, while the first element, run, refers to a 'secret', 'mystery' or place of 'secret council'.(Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, s.v. 'Runwell', p. 397.) As Professor Ekwall, the accomplished Scandinavian etymologist, observed in this respect, the prefix alludes to 'a spring or stream at which a meeting-place was, or rather to a wishing well.'(Ibid.) In other words, there is evidence in the parish as early as AD 939 of a notable water source that gave its name to the Saxon settlement of Runwell.

There is, however, another possible solution to the origin of Runwell's name. The Essex historian and noted etymologist P. H. Reaney proposed in 1935 that the first element might stem from the 'lost OE [Old English] hruna "tree-trunk".'(Reaney, The Place Names of Essex, s.v. 'Runwell', pp. 265-6). This is an interesting proposal, for in Anglo-Saxon myth and legend trees were associated with wells. However, since the original Anglo-Saxon form of the Old English run is spelt with an 'e', the way it appears in various early documents mentioning Runwell, I believe that this line of enquiry is flawed, and that Ekwall's more obvious solution is adequate.
Some idea of the usage of the expression 'rune' in a place-name can be determined by its etymological use in Runnymede, in Surrey, which according to Ekwall derives its name from the Old English 'council island, [or] assembly island'.(Ibid., s.v. 'Runnymede', p. 396) This would seem to be an apt description, for it was here in 1215 that a secret council of knights persuaded King John to sign the Magna Carta, a charter that gave the lords more control in running the country.