Nether Wallop (was Lower Slobbovia)

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 7/13/01 2:13:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Hixmaddog at AOL.COM writes:

> Among my favorite English place-names are
>  the Wallops: Upper Wallop...and the dreaded
>  Nether Wallop.

I have driven through the town of Nether Wallop without bodily embarrassment.
 To use an obsolete US expression, the town fits between two Burma-Shave
signs.

In 459 there was the "Battle of Guoloph" between Ambrosius Aurelianism, a
Romanized Britain who supported the Roman church, and Vitalinus, a Briton of
the Vortigern dynasty who supported the Pelagian version of Christianity.
"Guoloph" could easily have been Anglicized as "Wallop", so the battle may
have been fought in or around Nether Wallop.

One would love to imagine the boasts of the victors at Nether Wallop as they
counted up the kelt and wounded, but unfortunately English had not yet been
invented and both sides spoke Latin and Keltic.

Ambrosius, by the way,  probably was the grandfather or great-grandfather
(Mary Stewart in her Merlin tetralogy says father) of a man named Owain
Ddantagwyn, who is the best candidate for the historical Arthur.

     - Jim Landau



459 AD. The battle of Guoloph is fought, at which Ambrosius fights Vitalinus
The site of the Battle of Guoloph has not, to my mind been established.
Graham Phillips has identified it as on, or near, the River Wallop in west
Shropshire, but I have been unable to find even a stream by this name.
However, the name Guoloph, or Wallop, lives on in the name of a part of the
parish of Westbury, to the south-west of Shrewsbury