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Why Are Streets Named After People?

Kat7272

Kat7272

master brummie
Hi all

I hope this is in the right place, can anyone tell me why streets are named after people please?

Where could I find out more information about this topic.

Is there a kind of preservation order on a street name?
 
Some interesting info here https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/England_Street_Names_(National_Institute)
I didn't realise there are no "roads" within the city of London!!

Haringey council have a list of rules https://www.haringey.gov.uk/parking...-and-numbering#naming_of_building_and_streets
I never knew it was so complicated.
In Birmingham there are rules but it seems simpler than the above https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/..._developers/567/street_naming_and_numbering/4

I am glad you asked - I learned quite a bit on my search.
 
The categories from Wiki mentioned above….Names of noble landlords and their relatives, Properties owned by notable landlords and Contemporary national figures.

Just how many of them actually deserved a street named after them?
 
Thanks pjm and pedrocut. Very interesting, and thanks for the links.

I have contacted the relevant council as a starting point to ask for more info.
 
There are 6 streets, closes or drives in the country named after Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the bouncing bomb. He lived at Effingham, Surrey for 49 years and there is a Barnes Wallis Close situated there. Others are nearer to where he worked or near to coastal areas where the bomb was tested. Dave.
 
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We have a small shopping centre named after a county planning officer, I've always wondered if the deal was "I'll see you permission if you name it after me."
 
Or in the case of Birmingham (Manzoni) -"I'll design a mess and name some gardens after me in celebration"
 
Interested to read in #2 above that street names in Birmingham cannot be that of living people, is this a modern change?
 
I actually thought that had always been the case - imagine the embarrassment if a road was named after someone who became a criminal. I did wonder about Manzoni Gardens but then that is not a road.
 
Charles Bowyer Adderley, Lord Norton,who owned most of the land in Saltley/Duddeston must have had a great time naming roads.
Bowyer and Adderley and Norton after himself,Leigh after his wife Julia Leigh and George Arthur, Reginald ,Edmund and Ralph after his sons.

The rules for naming must be different for in other cities because Leicester has Liniker Street in the estate where the old Leics football ground used to be.
 
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Interesting topic.

Presumably naming after a living person was still possible into the 1930s ... Viv

"Greenwood’s 1930 Housing Act represented the first concerted attempt to clear the slums and rehouse their population. The year would also mark the peak of Birmingham’s house-building efforts in the interwar period – 6715 homes completed. Greenwood himself formally opened the City’s 30,000th council home in (the Conservative council giving due deference to the Labour Minister for Housing) Greenwood Place, Kingstanding". (From Municipal Dreams).
 
A call for the renaming of some streets in 1911 to avoid confusion. Topical events such as battles, changes of sovereign would be especially to blaim. Literary names and the aristocracy seem to have been less popular in Birmingham. Surprised at the limited use of "Chamberlain". Viv.
 

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Having worked for a short while in ambulance service, all I can say is thank goodness for the post code system and sat navs.
 
of course not all are named after people as i am finding out when i research different areas...after the mass demo of housing during the 60s and 70s quite a few new builds were named after well known factories or buildings ie just at the top of lozells road there is a malthouse gardens a little bit of digging and i found out that there was indeed once a malthouse nearby...i was mostly raised in villa st and i can only surmise that villa st was called so because the area used to be called aston villa...but what did surprise me was that someone had done their research on villa st because about 4 years ago a series of new houses were built towards the top of villa st which were up for sale(so not council houses)...one section of the houses is now called pearl place and the other section had been named button close..the people living there would most likely have no idea where their addresses originated from but straight away i guessed it must be to mark the name of copes pearl buttons...a long standing button co i remember so well...the houses have been built on the ground where copes once stood...what a nice gesture

lyn
 
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I do seem to recall a conversation with someone from the local council who told me they like to preserve the road/street name

if and where possible. For example Smallbrook Street became Smallbrook Ringway.
 
I worked with a girl who said her ancestor worked as a carpenter when Carpenter Road was being built in Lozells and was given the privilege of it being given that name. True - who knows?
 
Sometimes roads get named for reasons that may have connections to the area but sometimes to events. There is an estate near us built in the 1920s referred to as "The Battlefields" - roads are named after WW1 battles: Menin, Vimy, and so on.
 
Bordesley Green has Churchill ,Colonial.Pretoria and Botha from the Boar War.

My mother lived in Dare Road(no guessing who built the houses) and my sister Robin road.
Harry Dare had a son Robin.
 
When I was an errand kid, working for the Co-op I used to deliver to a house in Louise Lorne Road, off Moseley Rd.
I always thought it was a lovely name and often wondered who she was.
 
yes its often the case many yearss back its the same around bornvlle area only thers are maiinly named after flower names and plants
Iexcept that was the cadbury familys generations whom was responible that of ther naming of the roads just like they was in charge of the young juveniles offenders with in the courts systems sending young offenders oof the city to the homes locking them up but may be it was a good idea
Its a pity they do not have more courts like there there is alot of young offenders and they do not get locked at the ages of eight and nine and the old storys of they come from a broken home and they are left off the hook but another theory i have notice why was most councillors in the dys of early why was streets named after them when they retired of passed away cause that i have noticed over the last few days on my history books for birmingham
Reading up and checking on the thread regatding the stevens printers of bromsgrove street from the early yearsthere was mentioniond there when he diedthey removed is name and years later the history of the name of pershore street was reintroduced back to his name but the overall is always a polituician or councillor was named best wishes Alan , Astonian;;;;
 
All the roads around my birthplace, Kingstanding are named after London boroughs. Hurlingham, Finchley, Firbeck, Crayford, Sidcup, etc.
No idea how that came about.
 
eric not forgetting chingford.. plumstead and finchley roads and tottenham crescent...i live in kingstanding now and have often wondered why they were named after london areas...

lyn
 
Lived in Atlantic, Kingstanding, where the Atlantic winds would blow (well according to my Dad!). I suppose as the one side of the road runs along an exposed ridge it was quite possible. Viv.
 
yes viv atlantic road is high up...they didnt nick name kingstanding "little syberia" for nothing
 
Astoness said:
eric not forgetting chingford.. plumstead and finchley roads and tottenham crescent...i live in kingstanding now and have often wondered why they were named after london areas...

lyn
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The same could be said about the old Druids Lane prefab estate Lyn. The roads there were named after towns in Wiltshire, (Larkhill, Shrewton, etc.).
 
maypolebaz said:
When I was an errand kid, working for the Co-op I used to deliver to a house in Louise Lorne Road, off Moseley Rd.
I always thought it was a lovely name and often wondered who she was.
Click to expand...

I've just googled the name, (don't know why I didn't think of that before !). Louise was one of Queen Victoria's daughters.
 
When I looked at the street names in London they have kept a lot of 'odd' ones and in Birmingham it's another baby that got thrown out with the bathwater. Not many odd names left here in our city centre.
 
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