Ledringhem (; ) is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.INSEE commune file
It is situated also in the ancient territory of the County of Flanders, in the Houtland (or woodland, with the cities of Cassel and Hazebrouck) in the Franse Westhoek (French Western corner) where French Flemish was still spoken until recently.
The residents of Ledringhem are called in French Ledringhemois.
Geography
The village is about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) southwest of the small town of Wormhout, and approximately 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) north of Cassel. Bigger cities are Dunkirk further to the north and Hazebrouck further to the south.
Ledringhem is crossed by the small river Peene Becque,Cadastral map relating to Peene Becque risk assessment on nord.equipement.gouv.fr a tributary of the Franco-Belgian river Yser and there is one shorter tributary, the Lyncke Becque,Cadastral map on ddaf59.agriculture.gouv.fr passing closer to the village center. Other small rivers are Trommels Becque, Putte Becque, Platse Becque and Kaliszewski Becque.Map of rivers on Union des Syndicats d’Assainissement du Nord website (French)
The climate in Ledringhem is oceanic with a mild summer (Köppen Classification : Cfb).
Village limits
The river Peene Becque constitutes the southern border between Ledringhem and Arnèke and Zermezeele. It is also the South-Eastern limit with Wormhout until the limit crosses a field between rue des postes and rue de la Forgé. The North-Eastern limit with Wormhout is rue Louis Patoor. The village Western limit with Arnèke is Voie romaine (D52). The Northern limit with Esquelbecq is chemin de Rubrouck.
Place-names
The village center consists of the main square (La Place), the church, the cemetery, the town's hall and the village park, forming an islet nested in a large turn of the route de Wormhout.
There are two subdivisions: La campagnarde is a more modern part of the village in comparison with the rest of the built patrimony, situated in the west. Another modern neighborhood dating 2005 is situated at the former place of the village windmill, destroyed during World War II, at the east. The newly built road serving this neighborhood is called route du moulin (wind mill road).
Other locations (Lieux-dits) are called Bas de la Plaine, La Belette, La Butte, La Motte, La Plaine, La Potence, Le Baron, Les Grenouilles, Les Tambours, Oost Houck (coin de l'Est), Planckeel (Planckael), Sainte Anne, Tampon court and Zinkepit.
Ledringhem is situated on the D55 road (actually called route de Wormhout towards Wormhout in the North-East direction and route d'Arnèke in the West direction). Other smaller roads include rue Henri Wallaert, chemin d'Esquelbecq, petit chemin d'Esquelbecq (north directions), chemin de Bodeye, chemin de la chapelle, chemin de la pâture grasse, chemin de Steenvoorde, chemin des postes, chemin des prairies, chemin d'Heenhout, chemin du moulin, chemin du tétard borne and voie nouvelle.Ledringhem roads on ruesdemaville.com The village is a little off the ancient Roman road, now D52, roughly North-South in direction.
Heraldry
Toponymy
First appearances in texts The place-name is first mentioned Leodringas in 723 : "Leodringas mansiones infra Mempisco" in the Latin cartulary of St Bertin's whose first part is credited to St Folquin.PARS PRIMA FOLQUINI LIB. I. ad annum 723 Chartularium Sithiense (Saint Bertin cartulary), édit. Guérard, p. 49 on gallica.bnf.fr (French + Latin) This text relates a sale act written in 723 where the names given are Leodringas mansiones or Leodringae mansiones. It is thought that Leodringas is a Latin form of Ledring while mansiones were official stopping places on a Roman road and Mempisco refers to the Pagus Mempiscus, an administrative subdivision in the territory of the Flanders at the time. In this sale act, the owner, who is described as having a considerable wealth, was named Rigobert, whereas the buyer was Erkembode, Sitdiu's (Saint-Omer) abbot.H. Van Werveke, Grands propriétaires en Flandre au VIIe et au VIIIe siècle, Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 2/2 (1923), p. 323. (French)Eugène Mannier, Études étymologiques historiques et comparatives sur les noms des villes, bourgs et villages du département du Nord (1861), page 23. On Internet Archive (French) Ledreghem in 1080, according to Blomme (Monographie, 1895, page 159), citing the text L'autel de Ledreghem est donné au monastère de Watten par Richard, chanoine de Thérouane vers 1080. from Mémoire des Antiquaires de la Morinie, t. V, page 75, Alexandre Hermand, citing the chronicle of Ébrard de Watten, la Notice sur Watten, Ledringehem ar. 1090Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing, Dictionnaire étymologique des noms de lieu en France, Librairie Guénégaud, Paris, 1979, French , p. 394a. Lidringhere in 1207 (in Innocentius III's Regesta sive epistolae 2, LIBER DECIMUS. XII saecolo, part CXCII, dated 1207(la) Innocentius III's Regesta sive epistolae 2 LIBER DECIMUS. XII saecolo.). The text states in Latin that two-thirds of the tithes of the village (Lidringhere), with its lordship, lands, and other appurtenances are to be paid to Margarita, abbess of the monastery of Saint Mary of the abbey Sainte-Colombe of Blendecques, Ledringhien in 1330 (manuscrit de la bataille de Cassel) The manuscript lists the names of those who died in the Battle of Cassel in 1328 with their belongings.Henri Pirenne (ed.),Le soulèvement de la Flandre maritime de 1323–1328 (1900), p. 125. On gallica.bnf.fr (French) Five names are listed for Ledringhien (Wautiers li Weert, Jehan der Kindre, Michieus der Kindre, Wyl de Vernorsene and Michieus Rase, all possessing a few units of land),
Leregem in 1609 (Matthias Quad's map Flandriae Descriptio)Map Flandriae Descriptio by Matthias Quad, 1609 on commons Leodredingas in 1614–1616as an alternative form of the Latinized name Leodringas Ledringhem Latin name on crgfa.com by Ferry de Locre (Ferreolus Locrius)Ferry_de_Locre at wikipasdecalais.fr (French) in p. 86 of his Chronicum belgicum (Chronicon belgicum, ab anno CCLVIII ad annum usque M.D.C. continuo perductum.) Atrecht (Arras),Études étymologiques, historiques et comparatives sur les noms des villes, bourgs et villages du département du Nord on books.google.fr (French)Ferreolus Locrius, Chronicon belgicum, 258-1600 (Arras, 1616) (Latin) a work published posthumously by his father Philippus Locrius Leodedringas in 1639, according to Edmond-Louis Blomme, who was school teacher in Ledringhem and who wrote a monograph about the village (Monographie, 1895, page 159), citing the map of the year 800 in Jacques Malbrancq's De Morinis et Morinorum rebus, sylvis, paludibus, oppidis, regia comitum prosapia ac territoriis, Tomus Primus, ab anno ante Christum 309 ad annum eiusdem 751, Tornaci Nerviorum, 1639 Leregem in 1645 (Joan Blaeu's map Artesia Comitatus Artois)Map Artesia_Comitatus_Artois by Joan Blaeu, 1645 on commons Ledrenghem in 1757 (14th sheet of Cassini's map, the village is pictured as a parish with a wooden wind mill)1750 Cassini's map detail on rumsey.geogarage.com
Etymology An ancient and legendary explanation is that the name comes from the Latin form (Ledera) of the name of a local brook called the Leder. This explanation, given in tome II, page 572 of Flandria Illustrata (1641), and though doubtful, is also provided for the name of nearby village Lederzeele. It comes from Sanderus (1586–1664) who wrote, citing Malbrancq: Lederam pluribus ab ortu suo pagis nomem communicantem (The Leder was the source of many country names).Annales de la Société d'émulation de Bruges, Volume 10, 1848, pages 68–69 (French)Les Flamands de France: Études sur leur langue, leur littérature et leurs Monuments, Louis de Baecker, 1830, page 40 (French)Flandria Illustrata, Tomus II on lucia.kbr.be (Latin)
In reality, the place-name Ledringhem is typical Germanic, with the common Germanic double end -ing-hem (name suffix + toponymic appellative) found everywhere in Flanders, corresponding exactly to the English one -ing-ham (e. g. Nottingham). This -ing-hem turned into -egem where Flemish-Dutch continued to be spoken, but remained the same -ing-hem where the Picard language replaced the Flemish one in the Middle Ages. The French language has retained the old version, and often frenchified it as -eng-hien or -ing-hien (see above Ledringhien in 1330, similar to Enghien for instance) but the existence of the evoluted Dutch form is attested : Ledregem in the 17th century.
The only problem that divides the specialists (the "toponymists") is the right identification of the personal name (male's name) contained in this place-name.
The current name Ledringhem could be of Frankish origin, with the -hem particle meaning "home" and Ledring- being the genitive form of Leodro, a common given name at the time,Ledringhem on Quid.fr (French) who could have been a local chief. Hem is the same word as Old English hām (home), the Old Low Franconian form would have been *haim.
Another explanation for the name etymology is the Old Low Franconian *Liuthari-ing-haim "home of Luithari's people".B. Walker
Ernest Nègre notices that the Germanic -heim (sic) is precisely rendered by the Latin mansiones in the earliest document. He hesitates about the personal name contained in this place-name, but believes that it is probably Liutradus instead of Liuthari supported by Marie-Thérèse Morlet,Ernest Nègre, Toponymie générale de la France, no. 18123 (French)Marie-Thérèse Morlet, Les Noms de personnes de l'ancienne Gaule..., t. I, p. 396a. after Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing.DAUZAT 394a
The Anglo-Saxon history specialist Daniel Henry Haigh (1819—1879) noticed that the village could share a common etymology with the civil parish of Letheringham in Suffolk, England.Daniel Henry Haigh, The Anglo-Saxon Sagas (London: John Russel Smith, 1861. Reprint, Read Books, 2008). (English) and this theory of a Saxon or Anglo-Saxon origin is supported nowadays by linguists that analysed toponyms thought before to be Franconian as Saxon afterwards. Numerous archeological sites in the northern part of France along the channel coast show a very strong Saxon and Anglo-Saxon influence in the early Middle Ages.
Geology
Undersurface geology
The territory of Ledringhem was part of the microcontinent Avalonia in the Paleozoic era.
Euramerica, also known as Laurussia, was a landmass created in the Devonian as the result of a collision between the Laurentian, Baltica, and Avalonia cratons. Euramerica became a part of the supercontinent Pangaea in the Permian.
In the Jurassic, when Pangaea rifted into two continents, Gondwana and Laurasia, Euramerica was a part of Laurasia.
In the Cretaceous, Laurasia split into the continents of North America and Eurasia. The Laurentian craton became a part of North America while Baltica became a part of Eurasia, and Avalonia was split between the two.
Ledringhem lies on the London-Brabant Massif, a structural high or massif that stretches from the Rhineland in western Germany across northern Belgium (in the province of Brabant) and the North Sea to the sites of East Anglia and the middle Thames in southern England. The London–Brabant Massif is part of the former microcontinent Avalonia. The formation formed an island at some point in geological time. As the island was drifting past the Equator during the Carboniferous, on the shores grew a rich tropical forest swamp.
Superficial geology Ledringhem is situated in the Cenozoic Era Bassin de Flandre of French regional geology. It is north of the Weald–Artois Anticline.
Prehistory