Colin Crosby Heritage Tours

Womens Institute Learn About London Street Names

I gave a talk recently on the "Street Names of London".

I had been invited to give this talk by the Clarendon Park Womens Institute, who meet at the Friends Meeting House in Queens Road, near Victoria Park in Leicester.

London being one of the most historic cities in the world, there are plenty of streets with odd names, and of course all names mean something. None of them exist without a reason.

I spoke about streets referring to old gates to the city, such as Aldgate, Bishopsgate etc. In London these names do refer to gateways, unlike in Leicester and other East Midlands towns, where "gate" means "street".

Then there are the streets around Cheapside. This was the market area of London, "cheap" being the word that we still use to mean inexpensive, and the basis of the towns containing the word Chipping, such as Chipping Camden and Chipping Ongar. All these were market centres.

Close to Cheapside are streets with names such as Bread Street, Milk Street and Wood Street, denoting the commodities sold there.

I left a decent amount of time for questions, and was able to give an explanation for all the street names fired at me.

Any group who would like me to give this talk to one of their meetings is very welcome to get in touch.

Posted by colin on Thursday 16th July, 2009 at 8:16am