Great Innage and Little Innage
Early-attested site in the Parish of Edgbaston
Historical Forms
- Innage 1700 BirmDeed
Etymology
No certainty is possible with regard to this name but the probability is that it goes back to ME inheche first noted by Vinogradoff (Villeinage 227 n.l.) in a Coram Rege Roll of 3 Edward i and quoted in NED s. v. inheche . The relevant passage which has reference to a case from Hampshire runs “Item quicunque fecit inheche scilicet excolet warectum fru- mento, ordeo vel auena dabit pro qualibet acra unum denarium, excepta una acra quam habere debet quietam.” From this it is clear that the term is applied to the cultivation of fallow land for a crop of wheat, oats or barley.
The history of the word itself is obscure. From Vinogradoff's discussion of this term and the term inhoc (Latinised to inhoka , inhokium ) it is clear that the use of the two terms was closely similar, both denoting land inclosed from the fallow and put under cultivation. This association of meaning led the OED (s. vv . inhoc , inheche ) to suggest that inheche might be a derivative of inhok , inheche being what results from the action of inhoking — the verb inhokare is on record. Such a noun-formation is not impossible though we have no other clear evidence for an OE hec from hoc , with i -mutation of the vowel. It should be noted, however, that Kennett in the glossary to his Parochial Antiquities says (s. v .) that in Oxfordshire the term hitching was used of a part of the common field ploughed up and sowed (and sometimes fenced off) within that year wherein the rest of the same field lay fallow. This last statement, with its reference to a fence, suggests the possibility that in hitching and in inheche we have derivatives of OE hæcce , hecce , 'fence, rails,' found once perhaps in an OE charter from Berkshire, where a boundary runs onlang heccan (v.l. hæccan ). An inheche would then be a 'fenced-in area.' For final unstressed ch becoming (d )ge , cf. knowledge from knowleche , Stallenge for Stanlynche (PN D 534). It may be that inheche should be associated with the word hitch , heach , 'enclosure of hurdles,' discussed infra 335.