Why are two areas in North Bradley called Scotland and Ireland?
Names of distant places, such as New Zealand and Botany Bay were often given to outlying areas of a parish. Often the name indicates the period in which it was given as that place may have only recently been discovered, or had entered the public consciousness. The small groups of houses that comprise Scotland and Ireland were doubtless named some centuries ago when those two countries represented the limit of local imagination for distant places. In the not so distant past local people could always impress outsiders by quite truthfully claiming that they had visited both Scotland and Ireland in one day. Bibliography: The Wiltshire Village Book, by Michael Marshman.
