Antony Gardens

Antony, that parish in Cornwall just outside Torpoint, after which Antony Gardens in Pennycross is named, appears to be a corruption of an old and unrelated Saxon name – Anta.

The spelling and pronunciation of the name has evolved into the more common Christian name Anthony, perhaps that is what the chroniclers thought it should be. At the time of Domesday this was Antone, as is Anta’s farm or ‘tun’, and so it would have been more logical to expect to see the name spelt Anton today.

What is particularly strange here, though, is that there is an Anton elsewhere in the country. It is the name of a river in Hampshire, but this name itself appears to have arisen out of an incorrect identification of a place, Antona, mentioned by Tacitus, with Andover. Tacitus was evidently referring to the Trisantona, an old name of the river Trent in Dorset, now better known as the Piddle.