- generally speaking, a pendicle is something dependent on, or subordinate to, something else and in place-names it usually indicates a piece of land that originally formed part of a larger holding or farm. Some names undergo curious changes when their meaning ceases to be transparent. Pinnacle in Roxburgh seems to be one such name, recorded as Pendickill on a seventeenth-century map, but later re-interpreted. Pendicles would frequently be let to sub-tenants, who were known as pendiclers. The Statistical Account of Scotland for Dumfriesshire (1834-45) states that the lands comprising the Barony of Lochmaben, also known as the Fourtowns, were believed to have been
granted in small pendicles by King Robert Bruce... to the domestic servants.