Blandings: Out of the Map

Wodehouse sometimes borrowed the names of places for the names of his characters. Some are spelled exactly as the places, some are a little ... distorted. And some are used in the titles of aristocracy and clergy, where no such titles really exist, yet. This page lists major characters with 'place names' or where there seems a reasonable connection with PG. Of course, many of the names here may well have had other origins. Have a pinch of salt handy as you read this.

Key places are Guildford in Surrey (where PG was born), Stableford in Shropshire (where he spent school holidays from around 1895), Emsworth in Hampshire (where he lived at the beginning of the 20th Century) and London.

Earl of Stableford

Earl of Ackleton	A minor character. Ackleton is a village near Stableford.
Lady Alcester	Alcester is a town between Worcester and Stratford-upon-Avon. Lady A. is one of Lord Emsworth's sisters.
Sebastian Beach	Beach Road and Clovelly Road join Warblington Road in Emsworth. A leap of the imagination perhaps, but with these three characters plus Stockheath, Threepwood and Emsworth all appearing in Something Fresh, the coincidence becomes too strong to ignore.
Lord Bosham	A small town on the Sussex coast, about 3 miles West of Chichester and 5 miles East of Emsworth. Lord Bosham is Lord Emsworth's eldest son.
Lord Brancaster	Brancaster is a small town/village on the north Norfolk coast. Heacham and Snettisham are both on the north coast and also names of minor characters who are also peers.
Lord Bridgenorth	A town very near Stableford. The character is one of Jeeves's previous employers.
Felix Clovelly	There is a Clovelly Road in Emsworth - see also Beach above. (Felix Clovelly is the pen name of the character Ashe Marson.)
Marquis of Cricklewood	The Duke of Datchet, Lord Finchley, Lady Pinner and the Duke of Rotherhithe are all minor characters with names of parts of London. Lady Carnaby might also be included after Carnaby Street.
Duke of Dunstable	A town in the county of Bedfordshire, now virtually indistinguishable from neighbouring Luton. The Eleanor Cross erected there has long since gone but the crossroads where it stood remains and a plaque marks the site.
Lord Emsworth	A small coastal town just on the Hampshire side of the Hampshire/Sussex border and close to Portsmouth. It sits next to the River Ems. The town museum has a section devoted to Wodehouse. (There is a suggestion that 'Clarence' is from Clarence Pier in Southsea but that seems a little too much of a stretch to me.)
Boko Fittleworth	A village in Sussex about 6 miles from Emsworth.
Percy Frensham	A village near Guildford. Alias of Pongo Twistleton during one of his outings with his Uncle Fred.
Sir Roderick Glossop	Glossop is a town in Warwickshire.
Bishop of Godalming	Godalming is a small town near Guildford. (A minor Emsworth relative.)
Lord Arthur Hayling	Hayling Island is near Emsworth. (From an early book.)
Lord Hunstanton	Wodehouse stayed at Hunstanton Hall in north Norfolk on several occasions. (There is now a road named after him in Old Hunstanton.)
Lord Ickenham	Ickenham is an area in the outer suburbs of West London. What's left of a village pond and a few old houses suggest it was once a village, swallowed by the expanding metropolis.
Lady Lakenheath	A town and race course in Suffolk. Lady L's daughter Millicent married Ukridge.
Percy Pirbright	A village north of Guildford (and a railway station on the Guildford - London line), now contains the Institute for Animal Health. Percy was one of Lord Emsworth's pig-men. Cora and Claude Pirbright also feature as main characters.
Lord Roegate	Rogate is a village near Petersfield in Sussex, where Wodehouse lived in the late 1920s for a while. (A minor character.)
J. Sheringham Adair	Sheringham is on the north Norfolk coast. Adair is Chimp Twist's alias.
Lord Sidcup	A suburb of South London. Lord Sidcup was previously Roderick Spode.
Father of Lady Beatrice Bracken (but never seen).
Lord Stockheath	Another Threepwood family name from the area around Emsworth. Stockheath is part of the town of Havant.
Threepwood	The family name of Lord Emsworth and the name of the house in the village of Emsworth where PG lived in the 1900s.
Lord Tilbury	Tilbury is a dock town on the north bank of the River Thames to the east of London.
Lady Ann Warblington	There is a Warblington Road in Emsworth and the village of Warblington is about 1/2 mile to the south-west. The link is fitting for one of Lord Emsworth's sisters. (See also Beach above.)
Roberta Wickham	A small town a few miles west of Emsworth.
Dame Daphne Winkworth	Winkworth Arboretum is a few miles south of Guildford.
Bertie Wooster	Wooster does exist as a genuine surname. It is also possible that PG was using the proper pronunciation of Worcester (Wus-tah, with 'wus' as in 'puss' - not War-sess-ter.) There is a Wooster Road in Greenwich Village, New York, an area where PG once lived.
Lord Worplesdon	A village and station north of Guildford. (Married to Bertie Wooster's Aunt Agatha.)

There are many more characters who could be listed here (Bagshot, Bangor, Bodwin and Bognor to name but a few) but there's little to suggest a Wodehouse connection. In the end it's nearly all speculation as to where PG got his names from. But I'd love to see lists of his Dulwich College class- and house-mates, and his fellow bank employees.

Titles: there is a complication. While very few hereditary titles are now awarded, there are a handful of Life Peers created each year. These non-hereditary peerages are used to reward the great and good, and quite a few politicians, but not their descendants. Consequently, a number of place names find their way into genuine Lord's titles each year. It is entirely possible that if someone with the right first name was to be awarded a peerage, we could get a Lord Clarence of Emsworth or a Lord Frederick of Ickenham!

Eleanor Crosses. In 1291, Queen Eleanor, the wife of Edward II died, and he set about bringing her to London for burial. To mark the places where her body rested overnight on its journey to London, Edward arranged to have a series of monumental crosses erected. Most have long disappeared with some, including the one that stood in Dunstable, knocked down by the Puritans in or after the English Civil War. The most famous of the Eleanor Crosses gave its name to Charing Cross (Charing is a distortion of Chere Reine - dear Queen), long regarded as the centre of London for all distance measurements. Unfortunately, the one now standing is a Victorian reconstruction in the wrong place, the original having been in what is now Trafalgar Square.