How are road names allocated?

[Peter350]

It's a given that all roads have to be named or given some sort of identity, but how do we decide what to call them?

For major thoroughfares, the first part of the name is usually the name of the next town that the road leads to, ie: Romsey Road or Portsmouth Road. Groups of roads in housing estates usually have a theme running through them, such as Windermere Ave, Borrowdale Road and Derwent Road (places in the Lake District), or Nightingale Ave, Woodpecker Way and Heron Square (birds). Sometimes, modern roads take the name of historical roman roads that followed the same alignment, such as Watling Street and Fosse Way.

On a first glance, the second part of the name appears to based on the character of the road, ie; "Lane" for a rural minor road, "Way" for a bypass or relief road, "Street" for a city centre thoroughfare, "Crescent" for a semi-circular residential street that starts and ends on the same road, and "Close" for a cul-de-sac. Unsurprisingly however, this isn't always the case as some examples show below:

a "Lane" which is completely urban in character
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.9162438 ... 384!8i8192

a "Close" which appears to be more like a "Crescent"
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8118119 ... 312!8i6656

and a "Crescent" which isn't even remotely circular at all.
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.913643, ... 384!8i8192

So what I want to know, how is the last part of a road name determined by authorities, and why would it be chosen over a more suitable alternative?

[Truvelo]

Virtually all urban lanes were rural at one time including the Foundry Lane example you linked to.

There are some new build housing estates which use lane when close is more appropriate such as this one.
https://goo.gl/maps/tjhLTCamSRN2

[roadtester]

I don't know whether this is still the case but in the 70s/80s/90s, Road and Street tended to be avoided in new developments in favour of Close, Drive, Avenue and the like because they were felt to sound posher. Personally I think Road or Street is fine while something like Avenue is pretentious unless its somewhere grand.

[DB617]

Plenty of roads in East Berks that are called 'Lane' but are now minor highways, many with an NSL (praise be to Berkshire), some being B-roads or 4-digit A-roads. A pleasure to drive on compared to Slough or West London.

[KeithW]

Road names were never truly allocated but there was some custom and practise which does vary by location. The custom might well be different from county to county and town to town.

By and large in England a road was a highway between significant locations. A lane was a rural route often named for the destination at its end. A street would be a more urban road usually named after some significant building. An avenue would be wider than a street and usually lined with trees while a close would have no exit. However the reality is some of these names go back 1000 years and no longer bear any resemblance to their origins Anything built after the mid 19th century tended to get whatever name the developer could get approved and the more grandiose it is the better it looks on the sales flyers.

I can give you some examples from a village in South Cambridgeshire which was already in existence when the Domesday Book was compiled

Waresley Road was the road heading north to the village of Waresley
Potton Road was the road to Potton
Hatley Road was the road to Hatley St George and East Hatley but the western end was renamed Station Road when the railway arrived
Mill Street was the route from the village centre to the local flour mill just outside the village
Church Street was the route from the village centre to the Parish Church
Stocks Lane was a drove route for cattle and sheep
Bell Foundry Court was a dead end street leading as you might expect to a foundry for casting Bells and other things.
The Maltings was another dead end street leading to the place where barley was malted for beer making

Practically none of the houses built in that village since 1900 have street names that obey any rule except the whims of the developer and both Bell Foundry Court and The Maltings are now housing estates.

Sometimes old street names are an indicator that the savvy buyer will tick as a tip to look at a proper survey map before buying. In the 1920's a large number of houses were built in Middlesbrough on land at Saltwells Road. Within a few years they new residents were having terrible problems with rising damp. On investigation they discovered something older locals new all about. The road was named after a natural brine spring that had been used by a local salt company until the 1920's. Sure enough if you look at 1895 OS Plans the legend Brine Wells is there for all to see. The owners (the landlord) had to underpin them, drill shafts and a drainage system to keep the water table down.

About a mile from my house is a pretentious 1970's estate with the name Marton Manor. This makes me chuckle since as a child in the 1950's I knew it as a disused quarry that was being used as a land fill site by Middlesbrough Council. After it was filled up a the ground was consolidated, a layer of topsoil laid down and the land sold to developers. To be fair they must have done a decent job of it as the houses sell well and by the standards of the town fetch a good price.

[Big L]

Crescents aren't circular.

[roadtester]

Crescents aren't circular.

Semi-circular perhaps?

If you look at the one in Southampton peter350 linked to on Satellite View, it is vaguely curved - and at the northern end it does appear to have the smooth curvature of a partial circle. I'm wondering whether in this case there was a "proper" crescent that has been partially obliterated by redevelopment, wartime bombing or whatever and a new layout has kept the name of a street, only part of which now survives in its original form.

[Ruperts Trooper]

It seems to be down to each authority's officials how they name new roads - in Tamworth there are large areas of post-60s expansion without any road/lane/close/etc after the single word address although the distributor and spine roads all have a suffix

[Octaviadriver]

We live on Beech Grove, which is obviously named after the trees in the area, though we occasionally receive post addressed as Beach Grove, even though we're in mid-Wales!

In Brecon, there are two high streets; one is High Street Superior and the other High Street Inferior. The names may have been appropriate when first applied, but they would be reversed if given the names now.

[Helvellyn]

It's a given that all roads have to be named or given some sort of identity, but how do we decide what to call them?

That isn't a given, there are plenty of rural roads without names (although presumably they'll have a U or C number on some council database).

[trickstat]

I think names for the first part of the name are usually suggested by the developer, but they have to be approved by the Local Authority. The most likely reason for non-approval is probably the potential for confusion with an existing street. In areas where housing has been built on a site formerly occupied by something else it is quite common for street names to reflect the former use of the land. Occasionally, a Local Authority will get the developer to use a name that they want, perhaps the name of a deceased mayor or council leader.

[trickstat]

It's a given that all roads have to be named or given some sort of identity, but how do we decide what to call them?

That isn't a given, there are plenty of rural roads without names (although presumably they'll have a U or C number on some council database).

There are quite a few small villages which are basically made up of buildings along one road where the addresses are all in this format-

House Number or Name
Village Name
Postal Town Name
Postcode

[Helvellyn]

There are quite a few small villages which are basically made up of buildings along one road where the addresses are all in this format-

House Number or Name
Village Name
Postal Town Name
Postcode

I've not encountered number with no street (or other identifier - my address is <no> <name of row> but then again I'm not on a street. The post "town" is HIgh Peak). House name is quite common though.

Isolated houses have to manage even more generally, my grandparents were <house name>, <valley>, <post town>, <country>, <post code>.

On places with street names they're not even always signed even when they're used as part of the address. The village my parents live in has several like that. Without a sign "Church Road" is still fairly obvious but there are some there's no way of guessing.

[Big L]

Crescents aren't circular.

Semi-circular perhaps?

If you look at the one in Southampton peter350 linked to on Satellite View, it is vaguely curved - and at the northern end it does appear to have the smooth curvature of a partial circle. I'm wondering whether in this case there was a "proper" crescent that has been partially obliterated by redevelopment, wartime bombing or whatever and a new layout has kept the name of a street, only part of which now survives in its original form.

I have always thought that this road (a few hundred yards from home) was very strangely named as a 'crescent'. The road does curve, slightly, at the far end.

Edit : It looks like an old map from a very dubious website shows that Carlton Crescent in Southampton was much the same shape >100 years ago.

[KeithW]

Crescents aren't circular.

Semi-circular perhaps?

If you look at the one in Southampton peter350 linked to on Satellite View, it is vaguely curved - and at the northern end it does appear to have the smooth curvature of a partial circle. I'm wondering whether in this case there was a "proper" crescent that has been partially obliterated by redevelopment, wartime bombing or whatever and a new layout has kept the name of a street, only part of which now survives in its original form.

The Crescent in the UK was largely introduced as an architectural form by the Georgians and at its core is simply a row of terraced houses laid out in sweeping curve. In the Georgian original there would be an open space to the front of the crescent for the residents to promenade and service buildings to the rear such as stables, kitchens, latrines, wash houses etc.

The classic early example is the Royal Crescent in Bath which is a partial ellipse. It is a classic example of conspicuous consumption. As an architectural layout its very inefficient in terms of land usage which is of course exactly the point. Later examples are of various curved forms and by the 20th century it became just another pretentious name used by developers. The Crescent in Nunthorpe is basically a rectangular road with curved corners built in the 1970's I believe.

A circular form would actually be called a Circus and is relatively rare but there is in Bath an excellent example simply called The Circus
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.38596 ... !1e3?hl=en

In London you can find Ludgate Circus and Piccadilly Circus but they are not truly circular and the names seem to have come in to use in the 19th century.

I had a look at the old OS Plot Plans and the Southampton example seems to have been the same shape in 1890 that it is now although some buildings are clearly more modern. The original development seems to have been built by the 1870's on what was then the edge of Southampton. to the north were open fields while to the east was an Army Barracks and the Ordnance Survey Office on the corner of London Road and Ordnance Road. The area was indeed heavily bombed in WW2 and the Ordnance Survey Office was badly damaged and staff relocated. The site is now the location of the Crown Court I believe.

[trickstat]

Crescents aren't circular.

Semi-circular perhaps?

If you look at the one in Southampton peter350 linked to on Satellite View, it is vaguely curved - and at the northern end it does appear to have the smooth curvature of a partial circle. I'm wondering whether in this case there was a "proper" crescent that has been partially obliterated by redevelopment, wartime bombing or whatever and a new layout has kept the name of a street, only part of which now survives in its original form.

I have always thought that this road (a few hundred yards from home) was very strangely named as a 'crescent'. The road does curve, slightly, at the far end.

Edit : It looks like an old map from a very dubious website shows that Carlton Crescent in Southampton was much the same shape >100 years ago.

That is an odd one. Looking at the aeriel view I suppose the houses form a sort of crescent but that is also true of many streets that are called Close or Drive. It certainly seems unlikely that it ever was an actual crescent or intended to be one because it is hemmed in by the railway line and other roads. For me a crescent will more often than not have a junction with the same road at both of its ends.

[Big L]

Lots of roundabouts in Birmingham called '... Circus'.

Circus, of course, a Roman building that wasn't circular. But things get mixed up through time.

[trickstat]

Lots of roundabouts in Birmingham called '... Circus'.

Circus, of course, a Roman building that wasn't circular. But things get mixed up through time.

Probably with the modern circus that often takes place within a circular tent with a circular ring at it centre!

[roadtester]

The classic early example is the Royal Crescent in Bath which is a partial ellipse. It is a classic example of conspicuous consumption. As an architectural layout its very inefficient in terms of land usage which is of course exactly the point. Later examples are of various curved forms and by the 20th century it became just another pretentious name used by developers. The Crescent in Nunthorpe is basically a rectangular road with curved corners built in the 1970's I believe.

A circular form would actually be called a Circus and is relatively rare but there is in Bath an excellent example simply called The Circus
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.38596 ... !1e3?hl=en

In London you can find Ludgate Circus and Piccadilly Circus but they are not truly circular and the names seem to have come in to use in the 19th century.

There's an interesting case in the centre of Wisbech - a nice smooth regular ellipse/egg shape, one side of which seems to be called The Crescent, but the other side of which comes under two different street, or rather "Place", names.

To my (inexpert) eye the buildings all look to be of similar age (with the single exception of a much more modern building housing the local library, which obviously came later).

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Wisbe ... 4d0.158797

Why the whole thing wouldn't have been given a single street name - perhaps Circus - I do not know.

[DB617]

Also, there's a rumour in Wales that developers have for some time, starting around the millennium, been offered a tax incentive or other fee waiver for naming streets yn Gymraeg/in Welsh. For example, I live on a 'Cilgant' - a Crescent - which is completely unpronounceable by English speakers unless they have learned the 'll' sound and the 'y' vowel. Quite irritating and short sighted considering we live in a world where we're constantly writing/saying our street names to other people, often in call centres, sometimes overseas. I usually go with 'Cilgant *sigh*' and then just say the postcode.