Warboys

Warboys is a large parish and a village on what was the eastern side of Huntingdonshire bordering on Cambridgeshire. The place-name 'Warboys' is first attested in a Saxon charter of 974, where it appears as Wardebusc and Weardebusc. The name is perhaps from the Old Norse vardi and buski, and means 'beacon with bushes'. "Wearda" was also an Old English personal name, and it has been suggested this word means, literally, "bush of a man called Wearda", or, that the first element is from the Old English "weard" ('watch, protection'). Additionally, the first Norman family to settle there was named Wardebois, whom, initially, according to John Leland, were named Verbois, from Verboys, near Rouen.…