Thankerton is a small village in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom. It is located between Biggar and

Lanark Lanark ( ; ; ) is a town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, located 20 kilometres to the south-east of Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Hamilton. The town lies on the River Clyde, at its confluence with Mouse Water. In 2016, the town had a populatio ...

, and situated between Quothquan Law and Tinto (two local hills). Thankerton's name derives from an early

feudal Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...

lord called Thancard the Fleming, and means Thancard's enclosure. ''Ton'' is

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

for an enclosed settlement, and evolved into the modern English word town. Thancard was probably one of the Flemish

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of a knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church, or the country, especially in a military capacity. The concept of a knighthood ...

s who accompanied David I to Scotland to claim the Scottish throne and as such was rewarded with grants of land in Scotland. To the west of Thankerton is a hamlet called Eastend, on the south edge of the Carmichael Estate, whose main house, Eastend House, was used by the

Polish Army The Land Forces () are the Army, land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 110,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military histor ...

between August 1940 and May 1941. A stone in the house, with the Polish eagle on it, commemorates the event.

References

Villages in South Lanarkshire {{SouthLanarkshire-geo-stub