Hope – Name Origin

I didn’t spend long in the village of Hope, it was just sufficient time for us to visit the pub, the Cheshire Cheese Inn. The village name though is intriguing and The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Placenames notes:

Hope, Derbyshire. Hope in 926, Hope in the Domesday Book. From Old English ‘hop’, meaning valley.

I was slightly disappointed with this, I had hoped (excuse the pun) for something more inspirational. The dictionary takes some time explaining this word, it has numerous meanings, but in this part of the country, it was a relatively common Old English word to describe a valley. The village has had the same name for probably nearly 1,500 years and that’s some going, also making it one of the earlier places in Derbyshire to have been recorded.