Where in the world is Ingersoll?

Christopher Dewdney is a Canadian poet. When he drops the name “Ingersoll” in the poem “Spring Trances in the Control Emerald Night” it’s in a context I’d never seen it. Ingersoll is a city?

Paris was there before the name. Kitchener is a thousand miles northwest of Paris, London is two thousand miles south of Ingersoll. Hungry Hollow’s epicentre is near Rochester, New York. Asphalt oozes out of the ground near Leamington

Says Wikipedia, “Ingersoll is a town in Oxford County on the Thames River in southwestern Ontario, Canada. The nearest cities are Woodstock to the east and London to the west.” 

So Ingersoll is a city in Canada. You can drive to Ingersoll from Detroit. And now that I know where Ingersoll is and that London is the nearest city to the west … 

No idea if the Ingersolls who founded the city are any relation. 

For a writing class in junior college I looked up the origin of the name. The reference said the name originated in Derbys in England, specifically a place called Inker’s Wall. When the internet was still young I checked to see what more I could find and came up with a reference claiming the site wasn’t a wall but a hill, Inker’s Hill. 

And here’s what ancestry.com says today, “English: habitational name from Inkersall in Derbyshire, recorded in the 13th century as Hinkershil(l) and Hinkreshill. The final element is Old English hyll ‘hill’. The first may be the Old Norse personal name Ingvarr or an Old English byname Hynkere meaning ‘limper’. Ekwall suggests that it may represent a contracted version of Old English higna æcer ‘monks’ field’.”

Inkersall has had some recent development, according to Wikipedia, “Inkersall is a hamlet just outside Staveley … Recent developments include the creation of a small children's park along with the building of an additional convenience shop. Inkersall has two public houses, the Hop Flower and the Double Top.”

source: From the Other Side of the Century: a new American poetry, 1960-1990

edited by Douglas Messerli

1994. Sun & Moon Press, Los Angeles CA