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Trivia: Road name changes

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scragend

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Warwick Road (alongside the Lancashire County Cricket Club ground in Old Trafford, Manchester) was renamed as 'Brian Statham Way' after the former cricketer had died in June 2000, just before his 70th birthday.

And not so far away, and near to the Manchester United football ground, the section of roadway previously known as Warwick Road North was renamed as 'Sir Matt Busby Way' in 1993, shortly before Sir Matt's death in Jan 1994.

Before the square was turned 90 degrees, one of the ends of the ground was called the Warwick Road End. After the road was renamed, the end was also renamed the Brian Statham End.

This was something of an anomaly as Statham always bowled from the other end of the ground, so much so that he even named his autobiography "From the Stretford End"!

There is still a Brian Statham End, but now the square has been turned it isn't the "wrong end" anymore. Jimmy Anderson, however, does bowl from his own end!
 
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John R

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Black Boy Lane Haringey London N15 is now La Rose Lane after Caribbean born John La Rose.

Oxford has had
In Bristol, Whiteladies Road ends at Blackboy Hill, and I’m really surprised that political correctness has not forced a renaming.
 

The exile

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In Bristol, Whiteladies Road ends at Blackboy Hill, and I’m really surprised that political correctness has not forced a renaming.
Strictly speaking, as far as official road names go, it doesn't. Whiteladies Road goes all the way up to the top and ends at the crossroads by the Downs. Blackboy Hill is not an official road name - and as far as I understand it has nothing to do with any young males of whatever skin colour. Neither is derogatory, nor indeed celebratory in the way that a statue, or an Avenue or Parade named after an individual might be considered to be (see above!).
 

SargeNpton

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Strictly speaking, as far as official road names go, it doesn't. Whiteladies Road goes all the way up to the top and ends at the crossroads by the Downs. Blackboy Hill is not an official road name - and as far as I understand it has nothing to do with any young males of whatever skin colour. Neither is derogatory, nor indeed celebratory in the way that a statue, or an Avenue or Parade named after an individual might be considered to be (see above!).
Many "Blackboy" or "Black Boy" names in England are references to Charles II - who was known as the Black Boy by his family due to his dark complexion.
 

geoffk

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Alan Turing Way, part of the Manchester ring road, received its name in 1994, in recognition of the mathematician who cracked the Germans' Enigma code, and who had strong links with the city. I'm not sure if this was a re-naming or actually a new section of road to which the name was applied. There's also an Alan Turing Road in Loughborough but this looks like a new development.
 

Mcr Warrior

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Alan Turing Way, part of the Manchester ring road, received its name in 1994, in recognition of the mathematician who cracked the Germans' Enigma code, and who had strong links with the city. I'm not sure if this was a re-naming or actually a new section of road to which the name was applied.
Opened December 1994. Mostly a section of new roadway, but in the vicinity of the River Medlock it certainly looks to run on top of what was once part of Forge Lane. Apparently cost some £40mln when built thirty years ago.
 

gg1

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Grape Lane in York had what is now a very NSFW name in medieval times, with similarly named streets in a number of other English cities at the time.
 

Peter Mugridge

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Grape Lane in York had what is now a very NSFW name in medieval times, with similarly named streets in a number of other English cities at the time.
If that used to be what I suspect it used to be with one letter different in the first word and another word between the two words, there is apparently one of those somewhere in the country which still carries the original name - but there's no way I'm going to go and try to search for it. I'm at work...
 

PeterC

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If that used to be what I suspect it used to be with one letter different in the first word and another word between the two words, there is apparently one of those somewhere in the country which still carries the original name - but there's no way I'm going to go and try to search for it. I'm at work...
Magpie Lane in Oxford formerly had a similar name. Grape Lane in Whitby is another. Named for the trade carried on there.
 

tynesider

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Fannybush Lane in Chopwell, Gateshead, was renamed to Whittonstall Road in the 1990s

Can't imagine why!
 

61653 HTAFC

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Wakefield Council wanted to change the name of Tickle Cock Bridge in Casvegas, but thankfully locals persuaded them to leave it as-is.
 

Gloster

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There is a ‘Grapers’ Lane that runs over the top of Dainton Tunnel and runs south-east. After two changes of name it joins up with Love Lane. (Story of someone’s life?)
 

SargeNpton

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That part of Northampton that was known as Buttocks Booth is now Boothville.
 
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One rail related change is Cannon Street in London. The name evolved from Candlewick or Candlewright Street so nothing to do with the weapon.
Does anyone on here know the origins of Cannon Street Road, in Shadwell? I find the double-thoroughfare name quite interesting. Previous research hasn't turned up much on the subject. It runs beneath the railway into Fenchurch Street, not Cannon Street, so seems (to me) unlikely to be a direct connection to the railway terminus.
 

Mcr Warrior

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Does anyone on here know the origins of Cannon Street Road, in Shadwell?
Seems to have been just 'Cannon Street', back in the late 18th century/early 19th century.

Perhaps the 'Road' was subsequently added to the name to disambiguate it from the other Cannon Street which is located just a mile and a half away in the City of London.
 

W-on-Sea

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Gay Gardens in Dagenham was renamed from Stockdale Gardens in the 1950s. The old name was confusing for the Post Office, as there was a Stockdale Road in another part of Dagenham. The residents chose the name to emphasize what a happy place the street was.

Also in Dagenham, there's a Moore Close, the present name of which dates to the late 1980s (I think the reference is to footballer Bobby rather than pianist and actor Dudley, although both were locals. It was previously Castle Gardens (no castle in sight or recent history nearby) and had obtained a dreadful reputation as a hotbed of low-level criminality; the renaming was part of an attempt by the council to clean it up (even if that might largely imply moving "problem tenants" to a more remote estate....)
 

MotCO

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While living in Durham in the 1970s, I occasionally visited the electric colliery railway which ran from Westoe Colliery, South Shields, to Harton Staithes and on one occasion got a ride on the loco.

While there I noticed several streets in Westoe named after composers - Spohr Terrace, Beethoven Street and Mozart Street - thinking this was an odd choice for rows of miners’ cottages in north-east England. From the on-line maps, I see that these streets still exist, although much of the housing has been replaced. I noted also a Handel Street, which I missed on my visits. The strange thing is that a 1915 map shows that Spohr Terrace was previously called Mendelssohn Road. The current name was in use by 1956 but why was it renamed? As a musician, I was aware that, during his lifetime, Spohr once had a reputation equal to that of the others mentioned although the building date of these streets must have been some years after his death.

I had some correspondence with South Tynedale Council and was told that in the early 1900s the previous council had a policy of telling builders to choose street names based on a common theme (no pun intended) - and in this case it was composers. It seems that naming had become a bit chaotic and an attempt was made to tidy it up so that, for example, Westoe Rd was given one name instead of ten.

Perhaps a Forum member from the South Shields area will know more!

Quite a few street names associated with Germany were renamed during the First World War; Battenberg Road in Richmond became Windsor Road. Leipsic [Leipzig] Road in Camberwell became Comber Grove, but Blucher Road remained unchanged, as did the Blucher pub in Twickenham, presumably because Marshal Blücher's Prussian forces were on the same side as Britain during the war against Napoleon's France.

Strangely enough, Adolf Street, on the 1920s estate in Bellingham, did not get changed during the Second World War. It was, however, narrowly missed by a Luftwaffe bomb.


https://www.visitsouthtyneside.co.uk/article/9801/Ocean-Road-History
Combining both posts, a road in South Shields changed its name in around 1870. German Street was the early name for Ocean Road. It was called German Street because it led to the German Ocean, which was the old name for the North Sea.
 

Mcr Warrior

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Also in Dagenham, there's a Moore Close, the present name of which dates to the late 1980s (I think the reference is to footballer Bobby rather than pianist and actor Dudley, although both were locals. It was previously Castle Gardens...
Definitely Moore Close? Can see a Moore Crescent in Dagenham (not far from the A13 / A1153 Lodge Avenue roundabout). Not my part of the world, though, so happy to defer to your superior local knowledge of the area.
 

Gloster

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Also in Dagenham, there's a Moore Close, the present name of which dates to the late 1980s (I think the reference is to footballer Bobby rather than pianist and actor Dudley, although both were locals. It was previously Castle Gardens (no castle in sight or recent history nearby) and had obtained a dreadful reputation as a hotbed of low-level criminality; the renaming was part of an attempt by the council to clean it up (even if that might largely imply moving "problem tenants" to a more remote estate....)

There is a Moore Crescent, which looks like it used to be Castle Gardens. Castle Road appears to still be there.
 
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Seems to have been just 'Cannon Street', back in the late 18th century/early 19th century.

Perhaps the 'Road' was subsequently added to the name to disambiguate it from the other Cannon Street which is located just a mile and a half away in the City of London.
Plausible - but then the addition of Road is still unusual, rather than just replacing Street with Road. There are already two Cannon Roads in London (N14 and N17) but another name could have been chosen.

Actually, having written that and tried some other combinations of google searches - I found a 12 year old comment on a Londonist post which gives an explanation! https://londonist.com/2012/08/why-theres-not-a-single-road-in-the-city-of-london

"I can shed some light on this. As your World Wide Words link points out roads were for riding on. Streets, on the other hand, were paved (from the latin 'via strata' - laid (down) ways) and not good for riding on. By the late C18th most roads in Britain were turnpikes, and specifically surfaced to suit the needs of horses. There were not roads in the City, all the streets were paved. However 'road' and 'turnpike' became almost interchangeable, leading to some interesting anomalies such as Cannon Street Road in Whitechapel - that was built as a turnpike (road) but it was paved (street), hence the seemingly tautological name."

Assuming this is accurate, that's a wonderful tidbit of information.
 

Mcr Warrior

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It was previously Castle Gardens (no castle in sight or recent history nearby)...
The nearby castle in the Dagenham area may well have been the one-time 'Ripple Castle' on Lodge Road, a modest brick-built mansion house with castellations and mock turrets up at roof level. Apparently built in the early 1810s and demolished in the 1930s. Location, as per old OS maps, was close to where Lodge Road meets Ripple Road, so now the bottom end of Castle Road, perhaps?


Ripple-Castle.jpg
(The former Ripple Castle, Barking and Dagenham area.)
 

W-on-Sea

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Definitely Moore Close? Can see a Moore Crescent in Dagenham (not far from the A13 / A1153 Lodge Avenue roundabout). Not my part of the world, though, so happy to defer to your superior local knowledge of the area.
Sorry, yes, Moore Crescent (despite it evidently not being a crescent)
 

MotCO

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Plausible - but then the addition of Road is still unusual, rather than just replacing Street with Road. There are already two Cannon Roads in London (N14 and N17) but another name could have been chosen.

Actually, having written that and tried some other combinations of google searches - I found a 12 year old comment on a Londonist post which gives an explanation! https://londonist.com/2012/08/why-theres-not-a-single-road-in-the-city-of-london

"I can shed some light on this. As your World Wide Words link points out roads were for riding on. Streets, on the other hand, were paved (from the latin 'via strata' - laid (down) ways) and not good for riding on. By the late C18th most roads in Britain were turnpikes, and specifically surfaced to suit the needs of horses. There were not roads in the City, all the streets were paved. However 'road' and 'turnpike' became almost interchangeable, leading to some interesting anomalies such as Cannon Street Road in Whitechapel - that was built as a turnpike (road) but it was paved (street), hence the seemingly tautological name."

Assuming this is accurate, that's a wonderful tidbit of information.
There are also no 'roads' in the City of Westminster presumably for the same reason. Tottenham Court Road is always quoted as the exception, being on the boundary with Camden (?), but I have also just thought of Horseferry Road.
 

W-on-Sea

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The nearby castle in the Dagenham area may well have been the one-time 'Ripple Castle' on Lodge Road, a modest brick-built mansion house with castellations and mock turrets up at roof level. Apparently built in the early 1810s and demolished in the 1930s. Location, as per old OS maps, was close to where Lodge Road meets Ripple Road, so now the bottom end of Castle Road, perhaps?


View attachment 165261
(The former Ripple Castle, Barking and Dagenham area.)
Thanks, that's really interesting - I knew nothing about that, despite having some grounding in the local history of the area. It must have been demolished when or slightly before the Becontree estate (on the edge of which Castle Road and what was Castle Gardens are located) was built
 
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There are also no 'roads' in the City of Westminster presumably for the same reason. Tottenham Court Road is always quoted as the exception, being on the boundary with Camden (?), but I have also just thought of Horseferry Road.
Perhaps you mean an older and more restrictive boundary - there's certainly plenty of Roads in Westminster. Edgware Road, Marylebone Road, Harrow Road, Bayswater Road, Vauxhall Bridge Road, etc.
 

joieman

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There's also an Alan Turing Road in Loughborough but this looks like a new development.
It is a new development.
This is also not a name change, but on the same estate, a short road is named after the double-agent John Cairncross, except it is erroneously spelled "CAINCROSS" instead.

Another honourable mention is that Charnwood Borough Council seem to have no clue how to spell the name Gracedieu. Three roads in Loughborough are named after the Gracedieu Priory, but each are spelled differently: Gracedieu is spelled spelled as a single word on the footpath Gracedieu Way and at one end of Gracedieu Road, but at its other end, Grace-Dieu Road is hyphenated! And finally the dead-end Grace Dieu Court is spelled as two separate words with a space between the two!

On the Garendon Park development on the other side of town, Baily Road was supposed to be spelled without the "E", but the first street sign to be put up (which wound up facing a different street after the temporary connection between Baily Road and another adjacent dead-end street was severed) spelled "BAILEY" instead. This sign has since been replaced, but Google still seems to think it's spelt with an E.

I created a map of streets in Loughborough that have had their names changed (or disappeared altogether). Some highlights include Thorpe Lane between Ashby Road and the former hamlet of Thorpe Acre, parts of which became parts of Epinal Way, Garendon Road and Rupert Brooke Road; Mayfield Drive, which used to have the rather dull-sounding name of Corporation Road; Old Ashby Road, which was - well - the old Ashby Road until Ashby Road was diverted to the south of the then-new council estate; Gladstone Avenue, which used to be just called... The Avenue; and an alley called Dark Hole Lane, which formerly called Dark Hole Street and also at one time partly called Dark Hole Yard and partly Commercial Place. Whatever it was called, Dark Hole Lane disappeared when the extensive premises of the Clemersons department store on the corner of Market Street and the Cattlemarket were demolished in the early 1970s.

And then we have the street names that disappeared only to crop up elsewhere in town. The historical Falcon Street is perpendicular to the original Falcon Street running from Nottingham Road, which ran parallel to the present Morley Street, which used to be further to the south, adjacent to the former mill. Part of Gordon Street became part of the current Falcon Street, with the name resurfacing as Gordon Road as an approach road to an industrial estate (part of which was later realigned when Station Boulevard was built and eventually became part of Station Boulevard). Lastly, Hartington Street formerly ran parallel with the former Falcon Street and the current Morley Street (being situated to the south of both and north of the former Morley Street), which also vanished and reappeared on a new housing estate off Queens Road on the other side of the Grand Union Canal.
 

The exile

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Perhaps you mean an older and more restrictive boundary - there's certainly plenty of Roads in Westminster. Edgware Road, Marylebone Road, Harrow Road, Bayswater Road, Vauxhall Bridge Road, etc.
These are notably all effectively descriptions (ie the road to Edgware etc) rather than names so may have picked up their official names from outside the boundaries. There are plenty of cases elsewhere in the country where double naming arises from the general use of the “destination road” name although properties along it have different addresses. (Also the “un-English” use of “the” before the road name - “The Edgware Road” / “The High Steet” are OK but “The Church Street”, “The Acacia Avenue” definitely not!)
 

MotCO

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Perhaps you mean an older and more restrictive boundary - there's certainly plenty of Roads in Westminster. Edgware Road, Marylebone Road, Harrow Road, Bayswater Road, Vauxhall Bridge Road, etc.
Maybe it's just the W1 area?
 
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