What is "woodnesborough"

Woodnesborough is a village in East Kent two miles west of Sandwich.

Its name is first attested in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Golles-Wanesberge, with forms like Wodnesbeorge being attested a little later, around 1100. The name is believed to have meant Woden's hill/mound (Old English Wōdnes burh) after Anglo-Saxon god Woden (the English cognate of the Norse Odin, known in Proto-Germanic as Wodanaz); though some of the spellings also suggest *wænnes beorg ('hill of the mound'), from Old English wenn, wænn 'a tumour, blister, mound'. At the end of the eighteenth century there is a record of a burial mound beside the church, but the settlement also boasts a hill which could equally well have been described as a burh in Old English.

The village was once served by East Kent Light Railway and can now be reached by bus services from Sandwich.

There was also a post office, which closed down at the end of January 2008.

There is a Grade II* listed Anglican church dedicated to St Mary the Virgin.