Introduction to street names of Loughborough

The Streets of Loughborough    

Some Loughborough street names

Introduction 

In 1992 a book concerned with the history, categorisation and meaning of street names found in England was published. It was written by the expert toponymist and onomastician, Adrian Room, and begins with an explanation of the different words used to mean ‘street’ – like road, drive, way etc.. The main body of the work discusses the category of names which Room has devised, and ends with help and guidance for the reader looking to study street names.

Room includes over 3,500 individual street names, which are each discussed in detail and their meanings explained, as well as appendices covering street names in London and Manchester. The extensive index includes every street name included within the text, and, along with the normal page number reference, also includes the town in which the street appears, making the textual entries completely accessible.

Room has used eleven different categories of name to group similar name types together. In this short work, this has been expanded to twelve, to include Roman roads and ancient ways, as these are quite applicable to the town of Loughborough. Alongside these categories, for the purpose of this short work, the categories have been assigned a letter code, from A-L as follows, and including page numbers referencing the appropriate sections in Room’s text (Table 1):

Street name categories

Adapted from:

Room, Adrian (1992). The street names of England. Stamford: Paul Watkins.

A Roman roads and ancient ways (pg. 17-34)

B Self-descriptive names (pg. 35-49)

C Field and water names (pg.50-59)

D Directional names (pg.60-72)

E Religious names (pg.73-87)

F Trading, occupational and national names (pg.88-104)

G Names of buildings and structures (pg.105-124)

H Names from inns (pg. 125-131)

I Bridge names (pg. 132-143)

J Names of personal origin (pg.144-166)

K Commemorative and propitious names (pg.167-178)

L Thematic names (pg.179-187)

Table 1 Street name categories

      

Within his text, Room includes 19 of Loughborough’s streets: it is estimated that at the time of publication, there were just under 600 (1) unique street names in Loughborough, so the 19 included in the book represent approximately 3%. The following table outlines the 19 streets covered (2) alongside the relevant description applied by Room, the alphabetical code assigned for the purpose of this short work, and the page number of the entry in Room (Table 2):

Specific streets of Loughborough discussed by Room

Road Name	Text	Room Code	Pg no.
Packhorse Lane	Packhorse Lane was the route by which timber was carried by packhorse from Charnwood Forest to Leicester.	B	41
Coneries (The)	As for watercourse names, street names containing names of animals and birds may equally have originated as field names … The Coneries is a name referring to a rabbit warren, from Middle English coninger (coni, modern cony, being “rabbit” itself).	C	58
Fennel Street	Names derived from plants and trees may either be field names or else relate to prominent or profuse (or, conversely, rare) instances of the particular plant or tree … But, Acacia Avenue, wherever it occurs, may originally have simply denoted this particular tree, without deriving from a field name … Similar names include Elm Street, and Fennel Street	C	55
Meadow Lane	Names containing “mead” or “meadow” are also often borrowed from those of fields. Examples are Broadmead (Bristol) … Meadow Lane Loughborough	C	50
Swan Street	Swan Street is named from a former nearby swannery  (elsewhere it might have been named from an inn).	C	58
Beacon Road	Other directional names … include … Beacon Road, as a way to a historic hilltop beacon in Charnwood Forest.	D	71
Charnwood Road	Many of the field names, spring names and the like mentioned in Chapter 4 [Field and Water names] are also directional names. A street or road is after all desirable to give access to a field, spring or river. Charnwood Road ran to Charnwood Forest.	D	63
Dead lane	Other streets lead to a burial place of cemetery. Such names include Dead Lane.	D	70
Priory Road	Many historic towns have a street named after a former friary … A priory may be commemorated historically also … Priory Road has retained a memory of nearby Ulverscroft Priory, now long ruined	E	77
Steeple Row	Steeple Row is named for the nearby All Saints Church	E	85
[Hastings Street]	Loughborough Road, Lambeth, South London, has preserved the name of Loughborough House, the home of Henry Hastings, created Lord Loughborough in 1643. There is a Hastings Street in Loughborough, but this is not mentioned by Room.	G	111
Burleigh Road	A number of streets take their names from a relatively recent house or mansion … Burleigh Road bears the name of the 17th-century Burleigh Hall, demolished in 1961.	G	109
Garendon Street	Garendon Street is named either for the now demolished Garendon Hall, former home of the De Lisle family, or for the former Garendon Abbey, demolished after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which was on the land where the later Garendon Hall was built.	G	110
Bakewell Road	Bakewell Road preserves the name of Robert Bakewell (1725-1795), a local cattle breeder, who lived at nearby Dishley Grange.	J	154
Burton Street	Burton Street commemorates Thomas Burton, Loughborough’s great benefactor in the 15th century.	J	155
Fearon Street	Fearon Street is named for a local rector, Archdeacon Fearon, who died in 1885. The first houses, called Grace Dieu Cottages, were built in 1889.	J	158
Hickling Court	Hickling Court recalls a 17th-century benefactor, William Hickling.	J	160
Storer Road	Storer Road preserves the name of John Storer, a local benefactor who died in 1713.	J	165
Epinal Way	A modern type of commemorative name is that of a foreign twin town. Many English towns maintain cultural links with a European town, especially one in France or Germany, and name a street to mark the particular link and preserve the name of the “twin”. Epinal Way.	K	173

Table 2 Specific roads of Loughborough

From the above table (Table 2), we can see that the Loughborough street names discussed by Room appear in the following categories (3), where the number in round brackets indicates the number of occurrences of that particular category:

B (1), C (4), D (3), E (2), G (3), J (5), and K (1).

It is noticeable that there are a number of categories that do not include Loughborough street names, namely:

A, F, and L

Street names that fall into the missing categories might include:

A – Baxter Gate, Church Gate, Pinfold Gate and Wood Gate, as ‘Gate’ originates from the Viking word ‘gatte’ which means way. At one time there was also a High Gate in the town, which is now known as High Street.

F – one of the most popular street names across the country in this category is related to market: Loughborough has several of these – Market Place, Market Street and Cattle Market. Occupational names are indeed quite scarce in Loughborough. Occupations over the years have included those related to the woollen trade, to the textile industry, to brewing, cloth dyeing, transport and pharmaceuticals. Since the publication of Room’s book, Wheel Tappers Way has sprung up and is a nod to an occupation of workers in the area who would have been employed at the Charnwood Forest Railway. It is possible that another newer street name, Saddlers Close, harks back to the trade of saddlers who may have worked nearby when the area was part of the racecourse. The national aspect of this category refers to the nationalities of the inhabitants. At one time there was a Welsh Hill in Loughborough, but this was no longer in existence at the time of Room’s book.

L – thematic street names are numerous in Loughborough, and range from stately/country homes (Kelham, Calke, Newstead, Haddon, Clumber), poets (Byron, Keats, Blake, Milton), authors (Deighton, Cordell, Herriot, Durrell), trees (Willow, Maple, Hazel, Poplar), birds (Wren, Robin, Kingfisher, Moorhen), flowers (Laburnum, Lilac, Freesia, Poppy) and many, many others, to names related to more recent streets, commemorating the more modern history of World War Two (Aitken, Boyle, Hugh Foss, Peter Laslett).

Street names of 1901 to 2015

Sources used

The following maps and directories have been used to record Loughborough street names at varying times in history, to chart the development of street names, and to compare and analyse those street names:

2015 – Barnett’s Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Shepshed: with street plan and index

1962 – Loughborough directory

1960 – Barnett’s official street plan of Loughborough: with index to streets

1951-2 – Loughborough street directory

1941 – Loughborough almanac: with local information, street directory and ARP inset

1939 – Loughborough 1939 street directory with advertisements

1927 – Street directory of Loughborough

1901 – Old Ordnance Survey maps: Loughborough (The Godfrey Edition)

Number of street names

In 1901 there were approximately 130 unique street names in Loughborough. By 1927 this had increased to 171, in 1939 to 233, in 1941 to 236, in 1951 to 254, in 1960 to 297, in 1962 to 308, and finally in 2015 to 730 (4) (Figure 1):

Figure 1 Street name increases 1901-2015

If the trajectory from 1901 had been continued, then one might have expected there to have been around 500 streets in 2015. On the projection outlined below, by 2035 there is likely to be in excess of 1000 streets (Figure 2):         

Figure 2 Increasing street names 1901-2015

Loss of street names

Despite the large increase in the numbers of different street names, it is clear that over the period 1901-2015 some street names have been lost, which could mean they no longer exist, or they have changed to something else, either completely or enough to make them difficult to match:

Figure 3 Lost streets 1901-2015

Caveats

There are numerous instances where street names have been spelled differently, or qualified in some way which means automatic matching of duplicates is not wholly accurate. Examples of this are Aumbrey Gap, which sometimes has the qualification “Off Pinfold Gate” and street names that ought to have an apostrophe but sometimes do and sometimes don’t, like Kings Avenue. These will affect any analysis and the resultant figures, unless the raw data is cleaned up beforehand, which in this case has not happened.

The 2015 data

Street names

A closer look at the street names that appear on the 2015 map index reveals a number of interesting facts. There are 730 street names, and 51 different street name endings (5). Some of these name endings are unique, appearing only in combination in one street name (for example, Albert Promenade, and Annies Wharf), but others are much more prevalent (for example, those names ending with Street, Close or Road).

Here are the detailed statistics (6):

⬬    730 different complete street names

⬬    51 different street name endings

⬬    28 of these 51 names occur only once each, being 4% of all the 730 street names, and 56% of all street name endings

⬬    23 street endings occur more than once, therefore making up 96% of all the 730 street names, and 45% of all street name endings

⬬    15 street name endings occur only 10 times or fewer, amounting to 61 street names being 8% of all the 730 street names, and 29% of all street name endings

⬬    8 street name endings occur 11 or more times, amounting to 641 street names being 88% of all the 730 street names, and 16% of all street name endings

⬬    The ending “Road” is the most common occurring with 143 complete street names ending this way. That’s 20% of all the 730 street names

⬬    This is closely (!) followed by the ending “Close”, which occurs in 142 complete street names, being 20% of all the 730 street names

⬬    Other common street name endings are:

o   Street – 96 occurrences (13% of all street names)

o   Drive – 81 occurrences (11% of all street names)

o   Avenue – 61 occurrences (8% of all street names)

o   Way – 59 occurrences (8% of all street names)

o   Court – 37 occurrences (5% of all street names)

o   Lane – 22 occurrences (3% of all street names)

It should be noted that the names that appear to be missing from this map are Jittys, for example, Clay Pipe Jitty, other walkways like Rosebery Way etc., and short driveways like that leading to Ingle Pingle House, a single-track road, which does have a street sign on it which simply says “Ingle Pingle”.

The author has added a number of roads (20) that were clearly in existence in 2015, but for whatever reason are not listed on the map’s index.

An analysis of the use of “Court” (7) reveals that a number of university halls of residence are included in the map’s street name index, while the others consist of small groups of flats and maisonettes for private owners, or for specific population groups, for example, Badger Court is a complex aimed at people over the age of 55.

Street density

A deeper analysis of the 2015 street names and graph co-ordinates reveals much of interest, including those areas where there are the most differently named streets and also the least. The following chart shows each map co-ordinate with the number of streets that appear in that square on the map (Figure 4):

Figure 4 2015 map co-ordinates and street numbers

This can also be represented by a funnel graph, where the bottom line is G6 (Figure 5):

Figure 5 2015 map co-ordinates and street numbers

NB. The phrase “Not known” refers to the streets manually added which didn’t appear on the 2015 map, as the co-ordinates for these was not investigated. 

There are some interesting conclusions to be drawn from the above two figures, not least that as might be expected, the grid with the greatest density of streets, G6, is that which covers the centre of the modern town of Loughborough, stretching from Fennel Street in one corner to the Great Central Railway in the opposite, and from Wards End in one corner to Freehold Street in the other. The next most dense area is G5, which abutts G6, and together they encompass the old town centre, including the church of All Saints with Holy Trinity and the Old Rectory, an area which also includes the former guildhall and manor house, and two of the town's oldest inns. The areas with the least number of streets are generally those with a main road running through, on the outskirts of the town.

Next time ...

... we'll look at a case study of thematic street names in Loughborough.

Notes

(1) Figure calculated from a linear trendline of street names from 1901 to 2015. 

(2) The ordering of these street names is first by alphabetical category code, and then alphabetical by street name within each category.

(3) For category names please refer to Table 1 above.

(4) My lack of skills with Excel mean that the actual number of streets recorded from the 2015 map was 730, but the graph insists it’s 731.

(5) Regarding street name endings, where a street consists of “The” followed by another word, for example “Coneries”, I’ve chosen to include the second word as a word ending. In hindsight I might not have done this, so if I’ve got time, I will re-do the work and the statistics. 

(6) The detailed statistics are presented to the best of my ability: they may not be wholly accurate, but should be close enough to give a reasonable picture.

(7) The use of the term 'Court' in this post is concerned with the more modern understanding of the word - so a group of buildings often inhabited by, for example, peer groups, and found in an almost private complex - NOT the nineteenth century 'Court', which were groups of buildings (sometimes residential, sometimes commercial) off a main-ish road, through a side passageway, leading onto a group of buildings which clustered around the entrance. Examples of these still - or at least, entrances to these courts - still exist in Loughborough, for example on The Coneries opposite the former Odeon Cinema, latterly Beacon Bingo, next to the dentist surgery, and next to George Hill Wine Merchants on Ward's End. There is also an entrance to one such court next to the Jam Garden, also on Ward's End, although the sign above the entrance is no longer in situ, and the court known as Albert Terrace, between Culver and Glass, opticians, and the Loughborough Building Society has recently been re-developed.

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough, 20 November 2020

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows: Dyer, Lynne (2020). Introduction to the street names of Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutthestreetsofloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/11/first-post.html [Accessed 20 November 2020]

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