Setantiorum harbour

Identification: (at) the mouth of the river Wyre

Setantiorum appears to be the name of a people, a tribe, and so is of little help in locating the harbour. The latter is normally taken to have been at the mouth of the river Wyre, somewhere in the Fleetwood area. This seems entirely reasonable, given that there was a Roman road heading up that way (Margary 703), so there was presumably some installation of interest to the Romans at the end of that road. Note that if we are speaking here of a tribal name then it appears to be a tribal name based on a river-name somewhat of the form Setantion. The Set component of the name is seen also in Seteia, the Mersey. It comprises the river-letters s and t corresponding respectively to the hill-letters r and l₁. The an of Setantion is just the ending of the river-name when it existed in the Set form. The second t in Setantion will be the river-letter t corresponding to the hill-letter l₂, so we can deduce that the Setanti tribe used the hill-letter l₂. Ptolemy places the Setantiorum harbour between the Belisama estuary, the estuary of the river Ribble, and the Moricambe estuary, the estuary of the river Lune, so we really have no choice – the Setantiorum harbour must have been at the mouth of the river Wyre, i.e. of the river Setantion.

[This page was last modified on 05 April 2021]

[NB. Detailed information as to the different river-letters and as to how they were combined to form compound river-names, together with information as to the four categories of Celtic river-names, is given in Chapter 19: the rivers of Roman Britain. Detailed information as to the different hill-letters is given in Chapter 1 and information as to how the hill-letters were combined to form compound place-names is given in Chapter 2]