SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

THE ORIGINAL SIGN

AND THE NEW SIGN

Just goes to show they taught you how to spell in the old days.they cant even add up now without a calculator.

It is an unauthorised grammatical change.

To me the S looks like a slightly different typeface as well, as if it had originally been Prince Avenue, and an S had been added

Easily fixed with a permanent marker!

There is a similar thing in Otley, not far from where I live, north of the river. There is a street called The Crossways and on street signs, one says The Crossway and one says The Crossways (LS21 2AR). A short distance away is Oatlands Drive and on street signs, one says Oatland Drive and the other says Oatlands Drive (LS21 2AY).

The definitive maps that the local council hold, should have the correct details. BUT two different versions are shown on this O.S. map. North of Lidgett Park Rd. has the apostrophe.

South to Oakwood no apostrophe.

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=43 ... 38263&lm=0

chemimike wrote: ↑

Sat 28 Sep, 2019 11:49 pm

To me the S looks like a slightly different typeface as well, as if it had originally been Prince Avenue, and an S had been added

If you look closely at a lot of these types of sign the letters are slightly wonky... I assume it'll have been when they were cast and the letters were not placed 100% straight.

I think that at some point some committee of highway authority apparatchiks agreed that apostrophes would be omitted from road signs. This means that the spelling of a road name containing an apostrophe will be changed when new signs are erected. One example of this in Leeds is the various Warrel's in Bramley. I'm not gong back to check if this still applies but when we lived in Bramley there were some streets signed Warrel's at one end and Warrels at the other.

I have a vague memory that when the signs without the apostrophe were installed there was a letter in the YEP highlighting the incorrect spelling of the new signs and that's when I read about the "no apostrophes" policy. (This policy does not extend to greengrocers/ greengrocer's/ greengrocers'. )