How did Snig Hill get its name ?

[Ghostrider]

My daughter asked me this question earlier and I havent got a clue.

Have tried a google search but no joy.

 

Anyone know how it got its name ?

[Blackbeard]

From the "REMINISCENCES OF OLD SHEFFIELD

CHAPTER VI. SNIG HILL AND WESTBAR"

at http://youle.info/history/fh_material/reminiscences_6.html

"There is a tradition that it was once an inn-the Srigh or Snig, and hence the name.

But you will say-what is a Snigh or Snig? It is an old Saxon name for

the eel, and daring philologists connect this with the water at the

bottom of Newhall, street. Another derivation, you know, attempts to

connect the name with the steepness of the declivity, which necessitated

the application of a snag or brake to wheeled vehicles descending it."

[sweetdexter]

My daughter asked me this question earlier and I havent got a clue.

Have tried a google search but no joy.

 

Anyone know how it got its name ?

 

Snig Hill is a very short section becoming Angel St which is as steep as Snig hill and would require brakes on the carts.

I go with the eel theory

[Plain Talker]

snig= a brake (like "chock" for a plane) used to prevent the carts running away on a steep hill. Snig Hill is very steep, snigs were needed to restrain the carts. hence the name?

 

(that's what I have been told since I can remember)

[Lostrider]

Snig is a version of snick or in some areas snicket, it means a cut in Swedish.

 

We all ways called a short cut through the houses either a snick, snickett, jennel, jinny.

 

From Wikipedia------------------

 

Snig Hill.—In the neighbourhood of Bradford and elsewhere in Yorkshire there is a word snicket, meaning a narrow passage or entrance, or, as we should say in Sheffield, a "jennel." The word "snug" meaning comfortable, or lying close and warm, is identical with the word "snig" used in this street-name. It is the Old Norse snöggr, Swedish snygg, smooth, short, close, with a secondary or derived meaning. It is not the hill, in this case, which is "snug," but the narrow old street, and had it been "snicket hill" the meaning would have been clear. In the Supplement to my Sheffield Glossary I have mentioned the phrase "a snig place to catch a poacher" where the meaning is quiet, secret, or retired. Snig Hill, then, is "snug hill," snug street, with the meaning close, retired, narrow. In the chapter on "The House" a drawing of this street will be found showing some old houses, with projecting upper stories, and possibly all the houses in the street were once of this kind. In a street already narrow upper stories projecting a long way would give an appearance of still greater narrowness, so that such a street might on that account be called "snig" or "snug." How snug some of the streets in Sheffield once were I have already shown when speaking of the Hartshead.

[Urien]

When I was a young lad I can remember old men talking of the special ‘snig’ horses that were employed to drag heavy loads up the hill.

[jezzyjj]

snig= a brake (like "chock" for a plane) used to prevent the carts running away on a steep hill. Snig Hill is very steep, snigs were needed to restrain the carts. hence the name?

 

(that's what I have been told since I can remember)

Snig Hill is certainly not steep. Particularly when compared to many other roads in Sheffield. And as someone who cycles around the place, you get atuned to how steep things really are and you could cycle up there is the big ring no problem.

[Kidorry]

snig= a brake (like "chock" for a plane) used to prevent the carts running away on a steep hill. Snig Hill is very steep, snigs were needed to restrain the carts. hence the name?

 

(that's what I have been told since I can remember)

 

I agree with you there PT and can you remember the cobbles that extended from the pavements so that the carts could rest on them.

[Waltheof]

It's true that the Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning of small eel for snig (from 1482), etymology unknown, but that seems to be coincidental. S. O. Addy in his Glossary of Sheffield words (1888) defines snig as a branch of a tree or pole put though both wheels of a cart, or through the hind wheels of a wagon, to act as a brake when going down hill. He also defines it as a verb--to trail or move trees along the ground by means of a chain drawn by a horse. The noun might therefore represent a transferred epithet--the horses have to fight the friction of dragging trees; parts of trees help to provide friction to dragging wheels so the cart won't run downhill onto the horse.

 

I suspect the word has a Norse origin.

[Greybeard]

Modern English dialect according to A.H. Smith, - meaning 'drag or brake'.