Survey of English Place-Names

Historical Forms

• (æt) Colleshylle c.950 ASWills 11th

• Colleshill 1278 AD

• Coleselle, Coleshalle 1086 DB

• Coleshell' 1185 RR

• Colushull 1357 Cl

• Colsulle 1428 FA

Etymology

There has been much discussion of this name, which is formally identical with Coleshill Wa (Wa 42), and possibly with Coleshill Bk (Bk 227) and Flintshire (NCPNW 222). The first el. has been variously considered to be a river-name, a personal name, and an unrecorded OE word coll 'hill'. The discussion is summarised in Sr 282–3. EPNS has been inclined to support the pers.n. and Ekwall (DEPN) to advocate the word meaning 'hill', at any rate for the Berks and Bk names. Löfvenberg (43–4) also favours coll 'hill'.

The evidence relating to the Wa name differs from that concerning the others in this group. Coleshill Wa is on a river, now called Cole, which was Coll in OE. The river is called colle in two sets of charter bounds, one for Alvechurch Wo (BCS 455), on the E. boundary of which parish the Cole rises, and one for Yardley Wo (BCS 1282).The -ll – of Coll is well-represented in the spellings for Coleshill Wa.The place is situated on relatively high ground in the angle formed by the junction of the rivers Cole and Blythe. In the same parish, but near the Blythe and not near the Cole, is Colesleys (Colleslega t. John). Ekwall (RN 86) and EPNS were at one time inclined to treat the formal identity between the OE form of the River Cole and the first element of Coleshill Wa as a coincidence, EPNS adducing the fact that Colesleys was nearer the Blythe than the Cole as support for this. It is true that coincidence can produce some extraordinary effects in p.ns. but the proximity of the River Cole to Coleshill Wa seems much more likely to be significant than accidental. The position of Colesleys is not wholly incompatible with its being named from the River Cole, as Colesleys may have been the name of a wood which originally stretched all the way between the two rivers.The genitival form of Colles - presents no difficulty; Earnshill So (DEPN, 'hill of the R. Earn') is exactly comparable. On this interpretation, Coleshill Wa is 'hill of the R. Cole', Cole being a pre- English river-name probably from PrWelsh  coll 'hazels'. The only reasonable alternative seems to be to treat it as a name meaning 'hill of a man named *Coll', and to regard the River Cole as a very early back formation.

We are under no obligation to regard the Berks name as etymologically identical with the Wa one. Coleshill Berks is situated on a more prominent hill than the Wa place, overlooking a river now called Cole, but known in OE  as Lenta (v. Pt 19 and Lint Bridge 355). If the first el. of the Berks name is a river-name, it must belong, not to this river, but to one of several small streams which rise near Coleshill, none of which is called Coll or Cole in any surviving records. In the case of the Berks name, there seems to be little ground for preferring any one of the three suggested sources, river- name, personal name, or word meaning 'hill', but the genitival composition is perhaps more suitable to the first two.

Coleshill Bk and Coleshill Flints differ from the Berks and Wa names in having no forms with -ll –. This is not conclusive in the case of the Bk name, as only four forms are quoted Bk 227, the earliest being from 1279. For Coleshill Flints, however, there is a good run of spellings from 1086 with no sign of and -ll -, it seems reasonable to accept an OE  pers.n. *Col , related to the recorded Cola . Professor M. Richards informs us that he regards this as the likeliest origin.