Street Wisdom

[BJF]

This is the text of Guardian editorial from some time in the 80's--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Street WisdomThere is distress in Dublin over developers who select undignified names for streets on their new estates - Hampshire Close and Dynasty Downs are aggrievedly cited -rather than names which invoke the city’s nobler traditions. The City Council is said to be moving in favour of stricter discipline.This problem is largely insoluble. The only sensible name for a street is one which evokes its purpose, which is probably why Station Road is the most common name in London, with Church Road close behind. But what do you do when a road is no more than an arbitrary collec­tion of houses, on the way to nowhere special? The builders who ran up houses in terrace after terrace in our great industrial cities wasted little time in deciding. Often they simply named them after their children. There's a stack of nine Harolds in Burley, Leeds - Avenue, Walk, Road, View, Mount, Street, Grove, Place and Row, with Dollys, Nellies and Dorises scattered about the city. Leeds used to boast a sequence of streets, now demolished, which proceeded through the alphabet from Angel to Ventnor, at which point the process stopped. Perhaps they ran out of money.But these were mundane streets, concocted at minimum cost for an incoming army of workers. Elsewhere, notions were grander: Associations with royalty: few boroughs do not possess a King's Road, a Queen's, and a fruity crop of Victorias. The names of battles which England won; of poets and writers (Shakespeare especially: two avenues, two crescents, one gardens, six: roads and one walk in the London postal area, while Dickens, alas, gets only one road, one square and one street). Also the names of statesmen, though some more than others. Gladstone, for instance, much more than Disraeli, unless you add to Disraeli's score a crop of ambiguous Beaconsfields, together perhaps with the cluster of roads just north of Finsbury Park which commemorate his novels: Endymion, Lothair, Coningsby, Tancred, Venetia. But in keeping with the usual prior­ities of British public life, scientists are neglected. Lon­don has plenty of Newtons, but they may not refer to Isaac. Darwins are rarer, Kelvins sparse, and there isn't a Joule from Hillingdon through to Havering.Where they're not historic, names are often evoca­tive, though too often of the world which the houses de­stroyed, not of the one that is left: Woodlands Way, Farm Road, Orchard Rise. The outer suburbs have lots of Acacias, though they trail behind Willows. Yet such names are often self-conscious and unspontaneous.London has nothing to match Hark to Rover in Kirkstall, Leeds (though Who Could a' Thought It Street in Hunslet has gone); or All Alone, and Six Days Only (the pub in this street shut on Sundays) in Bradford; or a street in Yeadon called Football. Here and there in the North there is just a suspicion of sardonic humour: Nice View in Harehills, Leeds offers neither a truly nice view nor even a view of Nice. What is largely missing, though, is the spark of true invention which illumines the street map of Oxford, where after the postmen complained that two streets were both called Pitt Road, the City Council elevated one to Chatham. There, perhaps, is the standard of wit and intelligence, combined of course with dignity and pride, which Dublin ought to aspire to.    

[Leodian]

That's fascinating BJF. I particularly liked that about the Leeds street names.

[blackprince]

BJF wrote: This is the text of Guardian editorial from some time in the 80's--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Street WisdomWhat is largely missing, though, is the spark of true invention which illumines the street map of Oxford, where after the postmen complained that two streets were both called Pitt Road, the City Council elevated one to Chatham.     Personally I would have gone with Elder Rd & Younger Rd to avoid any confusion over the two Pitts. I didn't give much thought to street names when I lived in Leeds as a child. Who were Nowell , Clifton , Compton and Sutherland who had great swathes of Harehills streets named after them? I used to walk to Harehills Park down Kimberley Rd. With hindsight all the nearby streets were named after Boer war generals & battles, which of course I didn't appreciate at the time- they were just names to me .

[steve]

hi BJF in your post you mentioned the nellies there was also in the area was the bertha's elsie's they were all named after the builders daugthers

[Dixie]

There is a road just off Silver Royd Hill called Pipe and Nook Lane. I'm told that when an underground water pipe comes to the surface the water runs into a gully called a nook, hence the name. I remember all the back to backs of Armley Road and Tong Road which were grouped into names. Houses got bigger and posher as they went up the hills from 'one up and downs' along Wellington Road to the large terraces in Upper Armley. They were almost all rented and if you got promoted you would gradually 'move up' or be 'upwardly mobile' as they say today. I don't know why they go on about 'carbon emissions' today. When I used to stand in Armley Park and looked over all the houses in Burley there were hundreds of chimneys belching out a pall of smoke a mile high.

[String o' beads]

steve wrote: hi BJF in your post you mentioned the nellies there was also in the area was the bertha's elsie's they were all named after the builders daugthers That's interesting. I always wondered about those names.Also wondered how the city fathers arrived at the names of Cambridge Road and Oxford Road [no longer extant] branching off Meanwood Road. What connection was there with these University cities?And why the Elfords at Harehills?

[blackprince]

Worth a mention in any list of unusual streetnames are "Land of Green Ginger" in Hull and "Whip-ma-whop-ma-gate" in York.

[Si]

Or Whack House Lane between Yeadon and Guiseley.

[Steve Jones]

Rothwell has a Pickpocket lane near rothwell country park ,somebody was mugged there the other year!

[geoffb]

Off The A65 between Ilkley and Addingham there's a narrow road called Cocking Lane, no idea why it's called that:-)