_Gill_ is from the Norse _gil_, a mountain chasm, a glen or fissure in the hillside. For this name we are indebted to the Norwegians, who peopled the neighbouring county of Cumberland. The best-known places of this class are Aller Gill, Lodge Gill, and Dry Gill, as being associated with habitations and lead mines. The first is the _gill_ of the alders. In Burnhope there is Lodge Gill, a well-known name owing to a once famous lead-mine being there situated. The name very probably originated from some forest animal lodging there, as we find Lodge Field, Anglo-Saxon _logian_, to place, put, lodge--the field where probably deer were lodged in the forest-hunting days of the princely Bishops of Durham. In Burnhope, a lead-mine in 1666 was called Hesley Gill--the hazel gill. In Witton Gill we may have a very important place-name, for here may be the gill of the witness--the spot where the inhabitants met, similar to the meetings held in primitive times at particular stones. Leo says: "By the names Wittan-ig, Wittan-mor, Wittan-mær, and Readan-stan, we are informed of those national and provincial meetings for self-government which have always characterized our race." Anglo-Saxon _witan_, to know; Icelandic _vita_; German _wissen_, to know. The _Witena gemot_ Bosworth explains as "the assembly of the wise, the supreme council of the nation." Edred the Saxon King held a witan at Ginge, in the parish of West Hendred, Berks, and there is a Witan Dyke at Worthe in Hants, whilst in our valley there is the village of Witton-le-Wear. Mirke Gill in Bolihope is the dark gill from the Anglo-Saxon _myrc_, Icelandic _myrk_, dark. It is curious to notice how the Danish and Saxon _cleugh_, the Norwegian _gill_, and the Anglo-Saxon _burn_, are intermixed in Rogerley-Gill-Burn, Willowgreen-Burn-Gill, and Stock-Gill-Cleugh; but such are many names of places, for if the term _burn_ was not understood by a Norwegian settler, he would add his own term, _gill_; if this was not sufficiently clear to a Saxon, _burn_ would be added to convey his own meaning of a mountain-stream, and in a similar manner the various races of mankind have stratified and built one upon another the various components of place-names which are ethnological and historical landmarks too invaluable not to be closely investigated.