White stork - OE storc

There seems little doubt that white storks were present in Britain’s medieval and prehistoric past, although to what degree is impossible to say because the evidence from both place-names and archaeology is relatively scant. The only confirmed breeding record is from Edinburgh in the fifteenth century and, therefore, despite the claims made on behalf of rewilding projects, there is not significant evidence that the bird was a breeding species, nor that it was a common or widespread bird. The one probable stork place-place, Storrington in West Sussex, is, on the admission of place-name scholars, ‘a difficult name’, although the most likely meaning of any. Storkhill is included below because it has featured (cited as evidence) in popular discussion recently relating to the rewilding of storks, but no scholar of this particular place-name has done more than say that the stork is highly unlikely to be the referent.

Storgelond (lost, E Ssx)

Storkhill (Yorks)

Storrington (W Ssx)

Sources (see ‘About’ page for the full bibliography): Watts, Cambridge Dictionary; Ekwall, Oxford Dictionary; Gelling and Cole, Landscape of Place-Names; epns.nottingham.ac.uk; langscape.org.uk, EPNS 14.

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