Place Name
Agricultural heritage. Recalls the name of the hamlet of Bandonhill but the name goes back much further even than that. The hill was first recorded as Bandon in 1203, becoming Bandone in 1229 and Bendon in 1229. The name comes from the Old English words bēan and dūn meaning the hill where beans are grown. So the addition of hill to the name, which was added sometime in the mid-19thCentury and was featured on the Ordnance Survey map of 1872, was strictly unnecessary. The Thorngrove Table explains the bean’s importance: “[Broad beans] were a staple of the average medieval peasant’s diet. Eaten fresh while young, they were also dried and used throughout the rest of the year; whole in pottages and broths, or ground and used as a flour. They were considered a coarse foodstuff, healthy and good for the lower classes to consume, but not something to be eaten by noblemen, who by their very nature needed more refined and delicate foods to sustain them. One medieval bishop claimed he “had a solemn duty to his flock to avoid that plebeian, useful filler, the dried bean; ‘By oft use thereof the wits are dulled. . .’”
