ABSTRACT
The fact that a church, named after St Botolph, stands outside all the main gates of London, and outside some gates of many of our other ancient cities, has been ‘explained’ by telling us that St Botolph of Icanhoh, a seventh-century. As with the numerous ‘St Botolphs’, the explanation of the equally numerous ‘Saracen’s Heads’ had to conform to the condition – if it were to be accepted as a valid explanation of the modern name – that the Latin name found would be self-evidently correct. Cobham is only a mile or two outside Rochester – Durobrivae, which was also the name of the present Castor, near Peterborough – and this now insignificant village must once have been part of the elaborate defensive system that the very thorough Romans threw up around Rochester, as they did around London.
