Pauls Dene Road and Pauls Dene Crescent Salisbury

Pauls Dene Road and Pauls Dene Crescent are in the Northern outskirts of Salisbury, close to Old Sarum.

‘Dene’ is an unusual word. It’s most common use, at least on the internet, is as the name for a group of Native Americans based in Canada and the Northern United States ¹.

Assuming ‘Pauls Dene’ does not refer to the Dene of North America, the most likely derivation of ‘dene’ is a Northumbrian dialect word meaning:

a steep-sided wooded valley through which a burn runs ²

or:

a dell or deep valley, between two steep hills with running water at the bottom³

Well known ‘denes’ are Jesmond Dene ⁴ and Castle Eden Dene ⁵.

Both of these are reminiscient of the chines that we have in the South for example, Boscombe Chine, and, one of my favourite places, Shanklin Chine, on the Isle of Wight. Whether there is any etymological connection between dene and chine, I don’t know.

There are other occurrences of the word being used in the South of England, for example Mill Dene Garden in Gloucestershire, but it’s not very common as far as I can see.

I don’t think the word ‘dene’ entirely fits the location Pauls Dene Road and Crescent – Pauls Dene Road is possibly on the steep side of a valley (uphill from Castle Road), but if so it’s a much bigger valley than a ‘dene’ implies – and the Avon is perhaps a bit bigger than a ‘burn’. Pauls Dene Crescent is, I think, at the top of the hill.

I’m not sure which Paul the name refers to. If the ‘Dene’, does refer to the Avon Valley, then it could be a reference to Saint Paul’s Church, but given the church is over a mile away, and not as close as Saint Lawrence’s or Saint Francis’ this would seem a bit of a stretch.

Visiting Old Sarum?

For accommodation, see the Hotels in Salisbury page.

Footnotes

1. Dene – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [↩]
2. Dene (valley) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [↩]
3. Bill Griffiths, A Dictionary of North East Dialect, p45,Published by Northumbria University Press, 2005, ISBN 1904794165, 9781904794165 [↩]
4. Jesmond Dene – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [↩]
5. CastleEdenDene042.pdf (application/pdf Object) [↩]