The Place name of Mellor

The place name of Mellor is often translated as Bare Hill or Brown Hill. It is impossible to be certain of its origins as place names have frequently been corrupted and re-interpreted over time, but this seems consistent with the description of the Mellor Landscape at the time of the Domesday Book, when as Ron Weston has explained to us, the Mellor hilltop did not form part of any of the surrounding Parishes.

Another suggested interpretation however, which could relate to a far earlier time when the archaeological record tells us that the hilltop was an important trading or meeting centre, is that frequently used not too far away in the Welsh Marches.

Maelor or Maelawr is a Welsh name often meaning simply  "land, country or plain" but sometimes "market" from the word mael for profit or gain and the word lawr for land. A Welsh-English dictionary of 1803 (the Geiriadur Prifyscol Cymru) entry reads  : "there are places so called in the marches of Wales..... where trade was carried on".
(Morgan, Handbook of the origin of the place names in Wales etc, 1887).