Survey of English Place-Names

Etymology

Bearfoot Wood, 1838TA , from e.ModE  berefot 'hellebore' (NED s.v. bear 's -foot from 1551); the word occurs in the 15th-century Trinity College Cambridge Diction . Grammatica 164, and may be found as early as 1307 in Barefoot St. in Ripon (YW v, 166).