While I was in Brentford recently, I encountered a place known as the Butts, which is what you are
looking at. It's a rather nice square of 18th, 19th and 20th century houses with a funny name.
I posted a photo on Instagram and had a number of comments from people saying that they too have
somewhere known as the Butts or some variant near them. I can think of at least two others in London
alone. There's even a street in St Andrews called "Butts Wynd," although I think it's actually
pronounced "Butts Wined." It seems that wherever you go in Britain, you'll find Butts. Why is that?
Let's get to the bottom of the matter. Well, the word "butt" can have many meanings. It can
mean to bump into something, a cigarette end, a barrel, a tree stump, the end of a gun or a tool,
a kind of joint a flat fish, a measurement unit for liquid, the victim of a joke and of course
the one you were probably thinking of when you clicked on this video, you filthy devil.
But when it comes to place names there are four major possibilities. Well, at least in Britain.
In America, you also have the word "butte," referring to a flat-topped steep-sided hill.
We don't use that term in Britain, largely because we don't really have buttes.
The first is to do with land. In Old English a "buttuck" was a small area of land.
It was a golden age, when you could tell someone that their buttucks were half an acre wide and
not get punched in the face. The term was often used to describe an odd little bit of land. A
butt could also represent the end or boundary of a section of land, the place where two plots "abut"
each other, or "butt into" each other if you like. A third possibility is that it might represent
a clearing. Remember earlier I mentioned that one definition of "butt" is a tree stump? Well,
it's possible that "butts" means a place with lots of tree stumps, i.e. where the forest has
been cleared. The final one, and the one I most often see suggested as an explanation, is that
it represents an archery ground. A butt in archery is a mound of earth that a target is mounted on.
The fields in which these were placed were also known as butts. Well into the 16th century,
it was mandatory for able-bodied Englishmen between the ages of 17 and 60 to be proficient
with a longbow for the purposes of defending the country. In fact from the 14th century,
longbowmen were the backbone of the English army. A longbow has a good rate of fire, but isn't very
accurate over distances. So the typical tactic used was to have lots and lots of men armed with
bows in the hope that volume of ammunition would compensate for lack of precision. The majority
of these longbowmen would have been peasants and yeoman rather than dedicated soldiers. In fact,
the Unlawful Games Act of 1541 basically outlawed just about every kind of game for peasants and
what were described as "the middling sort," for fear that they were neglecting their archery.
The TL;DR version is that archery was a big deal in England for an awfully long time.
As a result of this, most towns would have had somewhere for men to learn and practice archery.
It was really only the rise of reliable firearms that put paid to this practice,
although it is notable that rifle rangers also call the target mounds "butts." Which
of these definitions relates to your local butt is a matter of historical research.
I recommend going to your local library or museum and asking them what they have on butts.
You might want to clarify what you mean by that, though. You don't want to make an ass of yourself.
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so
you