Stenards, Standers or The Stenders (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Tuesday, June 05, 2018, 16:29 (2363 days ago) @ ianjmill

Hi Ian, yes Stenards, Stenders and Standers are all references to the same area.
Don't forget in those days the local dialect was very strong and hard to catch and understand at times, especially for outsiders. Also standards of literacy and spelling were often very poor, so people would write what they thought they'd heard, and how they thought it should be spelt.
Trying to put a date to the Stenders name is difficult, it's mentioned many times in this history of Mitcheldean and it clearly is very old, dating from long before the 1880 map which shows it on this link. Local people often use the term in a general way eg "up the Stenders", meaning west of Mitcheldean centre up/along the Stenders road from Mitcheldean towards Drybrook then Ruardean.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp173-195

It may be considered incorrect nowadays, I really don't know, but the Victorian O.S. maps show the Drybrook road near Stenders hamlet as having "traces of Roman paving", and the road beyond Drybrook as "site of Roman road", it's that old, eg the 1888 map here.
https://maps.nls.uk/view/101570481

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PS Sorry, but while writing this my mind keeps returning to the superb Morecambe and Wise sketch parodying sellers of London's "Morning Standard" newspaper. A posh businessman in bowler hat tries hard to stop Cockney paperseller yelling "Morny Stannit". Having eventually "corrected" him to say "Morning Standard", we then see that the name printed on the newspaper front page is indeed "Morny Stannit"....