How Wellington got its name
Weo- leah- ingaton. Its approximate age is 1,400 years. As there are no written records to speak of which tell of those far off days we are compelled to look at what we know, and see what we can deduce from that. We can begin, as does Laurens Otter in 'Wellington, a Town with a Past' with the name. We are told by the Oxford Dictionary of Place Names, the most authoritative work there is, that it was originally Weo-leah-ingaton.
Weo- leah- ingaton says, in effect, the settlement by the temple in the grove. This implies a heathen temple, a place of non-Christian, pre-Christian worship. It follows that this must have been established well before it became a part of Christian Mercia, for the Mercians would never have permitted the setting up of a heathen temple in their country. What is more, the name must have been well established before Christianity came, or it would have been re-named. So where was the temple in the grove? Dr. David Cox, who wrote the Wellington part of the Victoria County History, makes a suggestion that seems extremely believable. He points out that it was the custom to 'Christianise' the heathen sites by converting them, like their inhabitants. So the most likely place for the temple is All Saints Church - or to be more accurate, the lawn in front of it, where the old church was before the 'new' church was built in 1790.
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