London has some amazing street names with peculiar histories.
In this episode, we learn about some of the best, from frying pans to murderous party guests, and king's clothes to knights on horseback.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are talking about something a little different. Today we’ll take a look at six of the most unusual street names in London.
[00:00:31] Some of them are steeped in history, while others make absolutely no sense at all or have more than one supposed origin, or explanation.
[00:00:41] There are literary connections, murder mysteries and legends.
[00:00:46] And in fact, for good measure, we’re going to include a couple more from outside the M25, from further afield, outside London, because there is indeed life outside the capital.
[00:00:57] OK then, let’s get into it and talk about some of the most unusual street names in London, and indeed in Britain.
[00:01:07] Now, before we start, it’s worth spending just a minute thinking about, reminding ourselves perhaps, about how streets get their names in the first place.
[00:01:17] Typically they’re named after places, after kings and queens or people of historical importance.
[00:01:25] Avenue Victor Hugo, Potsdamer Platz, Via Dante, Beijing Lu.
[00:01:31] And the UK is no exception. Most streets are named after places, attractions, or people.
[00:01:39] And to illustrate this in statistical terms, the most popular street names in the UK are, in this order, High Street, Station Road, Main Street, Park Road, and then Church Road.
[00:01:53] And it goes on - Oxford Road, London Road, Hill Road, King’s Street, you get the picture.
[00:02:00] None of these street names have particularly interesting stories, but there are plenty of streets that do, and many of them can be found within a very small area of London.
[00:02:13] So, without further ado, the first unusual street name on our list is Frying Pan Alley, in London’s East End.
[00:02:23] Frying Pan Alley is actually in a narrow alleyway in Spitalfields, an area of east London known for its famous market.
[00:02:31] And an alleyway is a narrow street or passage that runs between or behind buildings.
[00:02:38] So, how did Frying Pan Alley get its name?
[00:02:42] Well, you can probably guess part of it.
[00:02:45] It's thought to come from ironmongers that used to have shops in the alley and would hang their frying pans in the window or above the door to attract potential customers.
[00:02:57] On a quick language note, an ironmonger is someone who sells housing and gardening equipment, usually made from metal. And originally it meant someone who sells things made of iron.
[00:03:10] And if you find any word in English that ends in “monger”, it means someone who sells that thing - a fishmonger sells fish, for example. And it can even be used metaphorically, for ideas, for example - a scaremonger is someone who sells, or spreads, scary stories, and a hatemonger is someone who spreads hate, especially towards one group of people.
[00:03:37] But we’re getting distracted, let me get back to Frying Pan Alley, because there is more to it.
[00:03:44] The legend goes that one of these frying pan signs fell on someone walking down the alley, and shoppers then started walking on the other side of the street, causing the locals to call it Frying Pan Alley.
[00:03:58] Nowadays Frying Pan Alley is surrounded by modernist, glass fronted buildings and businesses, it’s in a really fancy area of London. But this is a relatively modern phenomenon.
[00:04:11] Even in the early 20th century it was in one of the poorest areas of the city.
[00:04:17] You can actually read about this specific street in the works of the famous American writer Jack London. He wrote a book called “The People of the Abyss”, which described the squalid, dirty or filthy, East End of London that he saw when he visited in 1902.
[00:04:35] In it, he described, and I’m quoting directly, “we cut off to the left into Spitalfields, and dived into Frying Pan Alley. A swarm of children cluttered the slimy pavement, for all the world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the bottom of a dry pond. In a narrow doorway… sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at her breasts grossly naked and libelling all the sacredness of motherhood.”
[00:05:04] If you go there today you’ll see lawyers and bankers, but, as you just heard, not much more than 100 years ago it was a very different place.
[00:05:16] Now, next on our list of unusual street names is Wardrobe Place, down in the City of London, London’s financial district, close to the Tower of London.
[00:05:27] A wardrobe, I’m sure you know, is the place where you keep your clothes, and it’s normally kept in the bedroom.
[00:05:36] So, why would a street be called “Wardrobe Place”? Who kept their wardrobe outside, or who had a wardrobe so large and important that an entire street would be named after it?
[00:05:49] Well, the owner of the wardrobe in question was King Edward I of England, who ruled in the 13th century.
[00:05:57] And “wardrobe”, when referring to a king or queen, was something slightly more grand than a simple IKEA cupboard that you or I might keep our clothes in.
[00:06:09] Technically speaking it wasn’t literally a wardrobe but rather the ‘King’s Wardrobe’, as it was known, or if we translate it into plain English, we could say “all the King’s stuff”.
[00:06:22] The King’s Wardrobe is thought to have contained something called the ‘Privy Wardrobe’, which kept armour and weapons made at the Tower of London, and the Great Wardrobe, which was where they kept King Edward’s clothes and jewellery.
[00:06:37] But in time it also became the home of coins and other valuables, important royal documents, fur, as well as other valuable things like spices.
[00:06:48] And as with Frying Pan Alley, there’s also a literary connection here.
[00:06:54] William Shakespeare, who lived close to the King’s Wardrobe sometime around the turn of the 16th century, described his property in his will as “being in Blackfriers in London, nere the Wardrobe.”
[00:07:09] If you were reading this and thinking “near the Wardrobe”?, well, this street was so well known that people simply referred to it as “the wardrobe”.
[00:07:19] So, can you go and see this wardrobe today?
[00:07:22] Unfortunately not. The King’s Wardrobe burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but you can certainly visit the street and feel smug about knowing where it got its name from.
[00:07:36] For our next street we only have to walk 10 minutes north from Wardrobe Place, to the strangely named Turnagain Lane.
[00:07:45] And indeed, walking, getting from one point to another, is going to play an important role in the story of Turnagain lane.
[00:07:54] Another important point to mention in this story is about a London river. And I’m not talking about the River Thames, the big river that runs from west to east, that cuts across the belly of the city.
[00:08:07] I’m talking about a river called the River Fleet. It doesn’t exist any more, but it used to run down Farringdon Street and join the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge.
[00:08:20] Crucially, there was no bridge to cross the Fleet in this part of Farringdon, so if you were walking down Turnagain Lane you’d have to ‘turn again’ and find a different route - it was, in other words, a dead end, and the street name an instruction.
[00:08:39] And though the river went dry in the 18th century, the name stuck and remains to this day. In fact, it you go to Turnagain Lane today you’ll find some slightly unattractive garages, so the instructions in the street name are just as valid as they were several hundred years ago.
[00:09:00] Now, the next on our list is a little more dramatic.
[00:09:04] It’s called Knightrider Street, and is just around the corner from Wardrobe Place.
[00:09:11] It’s Knight with a K, knight, a soldier in The Middle Ages, rather than night, the opposite of day.
[00:09:19] Knightrider Street allegedly got its name because it was the road that knights would travel down in mediaeval London to get to their jousting competitions.
[00:09:30] Jousting, in case this word is unfamiliar, was a form of duelling, or fighting, done by people on horseback with long lances, long poles, in the mediaeval era.
[00:09:42] And if you are more familiar with American pop culture than you are with mediaeval jousting, which would be understandable, you might remember that Knight Rider was also the name of a popular 1980s TV drama starring David Hasselhoff.
[00:09:57] There is a signed picture of David Hasselhoff in a pub on Knightrider street, but unfortunately the name of this street predates him by, well, almost 700 years, with its first recorded use being in 1322.
[00:10:15] Penultimate on our London list is Hanging Sword Alley, close to London’s famous Fleet Street, the place where all the big newspapers were traditionally based.
[00:10:25] Hanging Sword Alley allegedly dates back to the 16th century, if not before, but historians seem to think that it was first called Hanging Sword Alley in 1564 because of a sign for a fencing school that hung in the street.
[00:10:42] Fencing, by the way, is the sport where people fight with thin swords, which you might have seen in the Olympics.
[00:10:49] Interestingly, Hanging Sword Alley also had another name for a while in the 18th century when it became known as ‘Blood Bowl Alley’ after a well-known disreputable local pub called Blood Bowl House where a prostitute was caught trying to rob a client.
[00:11:07] And once again, this unusual street name also has a literary connection, appearing in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House.
[00:11:19] Finally, the last unusual street name on our London list, Bleeding Heart Yard, has two explanations, or origins, and two literary connections.
[00:11:31] The first, and perhaps the most believable story, but I'll let you be the judge, is that it took its name from a 16th century inn, a pub, called The Bleeding Heart.
[00:11:44] According to this story, the inn’s sign had a picture of the Virgin Mary’s heart being stabbed by several swords.
[00:11:52] This one seems logical, and is the type of thing that streets are typically named after.
[00:12:00] The other, slightly less believable but more exciting story, is that on a night in January of 1646 a bloody murder occurred in the yard.
[00:12:11] According to the story, which is more of an urban legend at this point, there was a ball, a party, that was taking place that night, and a strange man with a clawed hand appeared as a guest.
[00:12:26] He spent the night, the story goes, dancing with and charming a woman named Lady Hatton, a figure from England’s 17th century aristocracy.
[00:12:38] The only problem?
[00:12:39] Well, the morning after the party her bloodied body was found ripped apart in what is now known as Bleeding Heart Yard.
[00:12:49] Her heart, so the legend goes, was apparently found lying on the ground, still working and pumping out blood.
[00:12:59] Unlikely, perhaps, but it’s certainly a good story.
[00:13:04] And Bleeding Heart Yard also has a literary connection, and again it's the novelist most associated with London, Charles Dickens.
[00:13:13] In his novel Little Dorrit, Bleeding Heart Yard is the home of the Plornish family.
[00:13:19] But Bleeding Heart Yard’s literary connections go even further back than Dickens, first appearing in a collection of poems and stories published in 1837 known as the Ingoldsby Legends.
[00:13:34] In one of the stories, a woman - presumably Lady Hatton - makes a deal with the devil to become very wealthy, and during the housewarming of her new mansion, the party to celebrate her new home, the devil arrives, dances with her, and then rips out her heart and throws it into Bleeding Heart Yard, where’s it’s found still squirting out blood the next morning - hence the name.
[00:14:01] Well, however it got its name, Bleeding Heart Yard - and the name - remains to this day.
[00:14:09] So, there are six weird and wonderful street names from London, but I would be doing an injustice to the rest of the country if I didn’t at least mention a few more, as there are some wonderful stories of street names from elsewhere.
[00:14:23] So, without further ado, let me tell you the story of a street with an unusual name because, well, it’s called “The Street with No Name”.
[00:14:33] That’s actually it’s name, “The Street With No Name”, and it’s in the village of Teignmouth in Devon, to the south west of England.
[00:14:41] And the story of how it got its name, or how it didn’t get its name, perhaps, is somewhat of a sad one.
[00:14:49] The Street With No Name isn’t really a street, per se, it’s more like an alleyway between two larger streets.
[00:14:57] And it’s somewhat of an accidental street, it’s really just a gap between two rows of houses, but was considered large enough to be given a name, although not a real name.
[00:15:08] So, it’s a bit of a sad story if you ask me, but it's an interesting one nevertheless.
[00:15:16] And our final one is the bizarrely named Warning Tongue Lane in Doncaster, which is in South Yorkshire in the north of England.
[00:15:25] The legend goes that there’s somewhat of a spooky story to this lane, which runs through Doncaster and a woodland area, which was itself once known as Wailing Wood by locals.
[00:15:37] Wailing, in case you weren’t aware, is another way of saying screaming or crying, usually from pain or anger or fear.
[00:15:46] Anyway, Wailing Wood got its name, apparently, from an old story about a carriage which crashed in some fog on Warning Tongue Lane many years ago.
[00:15:58] A woman, so the story goes, died in the crash and is now thought to haunt the woods on foggy nights and warn people from driving down the lane, so they don’t meet the same fate as she did.
[00:16:11] And Warning Tongue Lane, you might have guessed, comes from her wailing warning that can be heard on misty nights.
[00:16:19] Spooky stuff indeed.
[00:16:22] So, there you go, six of the most unusual street names in London, and a couple more from further afield.
[00:16:30] All of these streets still exist today, and the London ones are actually surprisingly close together.
[00:16:38] I plotted them all on Google Maps, and it would only take 59 minutes for you to visit all six of them.
[00:16:45] So, if you are planning to a visit to London, and you want a challenge that you can do in under an hour, go and give it a go.
[00:16:53] Go to Knightrider Street and Bleeding Heart Yard, stop and watch the office workers dashing around from meeting to meeting, and you can feel smug and proud that you know, in all probability, a lot more than them about the weird and wonderful stories behind these street names.
[00:17:14] Ok then, that is it for today’s episode on unusual street names in London, with a couple of bonus ones from the rest of the country.
[00:17:22] It almost goes without saying that these are only a small, tiny selection, but an interesting one nonetheless.
[00:17:30] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:17:34] Had you heard the stories of any of these streets before?
[00:17:37] What about strange street names in your own country?
[00:17:40] What’s the most unusual street you’ve ever lived on?
[00:17:43] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:46] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:55] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:59] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are talking about something a little different. Today we’ll take a look at six of the most unusual street names in London.
[00:00:31] Some of them are steeped in history, while others make absolutely no sense at all or have more than one supposed origin, or explanation.
[00:00:41] There are literary connections, murder mysteries and legends.
[00:00:46] And in fact, for good measure, we’re going to include a couple more from outside the M25, from further afield, outside London, because there is indeed life outside the capital.
[00:00:57] OK then, let’s get into it and talk about some of the most unusual street names in London, and indeed in Britain.
[00:01:07] Now, before we start, it’s worth spending just a minute thinking about, reminding ourselves perhaps, about how streets get their names in the first place.
[00:01:17] Typically they’re named after places, after kings and queens or people of historical importance.
[00:01:25] Avenue Victor Hugo, Potsdamer Platz, Via Dante, Beijing Lu.
[00:01:31] And the UK is no exception. Most streets are named after places, attractions, or people.
[00:01:39] And to illustrate this in statistical terms, the most popular street names in the UK are, in this order, High Street, Station Road, Main Street, Park Road, and then Church Road.
[00:01:53] And it goes on - Oxford Road, London Road, Hill Road, King’s Street, you get the picture.
[00:02:00] None of these street names have particularly interesting stories, but there are plenty of streets that do, and many of them can be found within a very small area of London.
[00:02:13] So, without further ado, the first unusual street name on our list is Frying Pan Alley, in London’s East End.
[00:02:23] Frying Pan Alley is actually in a narrow alleyway in Spitalfields, an area of east London known for its famous market.
[00:02:31] And an alleyway is a narrow street or passage that runs between or behind buildings.
[00:02:38] So, how did Frying Pan Alley get its name?
[00:02:42] Well, you can probably guess part of it.
[00:02:45] It's thought to come from ironmongers that used to have shops in the alley and would hang their frying pans in the window or above the door to attract potential customers.
[00:02:57] On a quick language note, an ironmonger is someone who sells housing and gardening equipment, usually made from metal. And originally it meant someone who sells things made of iron.
[00:03:10] And if you find any word in English that ends in “monger”, it means someone who sells that thing - a fishmonger sells fish, for example. And it can even be used metaphorically, for ideas, for example - a scaremonger is someone who sells, or spreads, scary stories, and a hatemonger is someone who spreads hate, especially towards one group of people.
[00:03:37] But we’re getting distracted, let me get back to Frying Pan Alley, because there is more to it.
[00:03:44] The legend goes that one of these frying pan signs fell on someone walking down the alley, and shoppers then started walking on the other side of the street, causing the locals to call it Frying Pan Alley.
[00:03:58] Nowadays Frying Pan Alley is surrounded by modernist, glass fronted buildings and businesses, it’s in a really fancy area of London. But this is a relatively modern phenomenon.
[00:04:11] Even in the early 20th century it was in one of the poorest areas of the city.
[00:04:17] You can actually read about this specific street in the works of the famous American writer Jack London. He wrote a book called “The People of the Abyss”, which described the squalid, dirty or filthy, East End of London that he saw when he visited in 1902.
[00:04:35] In it, he described, and I’m quoting directly, “we cut off to the left into Spitalfields, and dived into Frying Pan Alley. A swarm of children cluttered the slimy pavement, for all the world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the bottom of a dry pond. In a narrow doorway… sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at her breasts grossly naked and libelling all the sacredness of motherhood.”
[00:05:04] If you go there today you’ll see lawyers and bankers, but, as you just heard, not much more than 100 years ago it was a very different place.
[00:05:16] Now, next on our list of unusual street names is Wardrobe Place, down in the City of London, London’s financial district, close to the Tower of London.
[00:05:27] A wardrobe, I’m sure you know, is the place where you keep your clothes, and it’s normally kept in the bedroom.
[00:05:36] So, why would a street be called “Wardrobe Place”? Who kept their wardrobe outside, or who had a wardrobe so large and important that an entire street would be named after it?
[00:05:49] Well, the owner of the wardrobe in question was King Edward I of England, who ruled in the 13th century.
[00:05:57] And “wardrobe”, when referring to a king or queen, was something slightly more grand than a simple IKEA cupboard that you or I might keep our clothes in.
[00:06:09] Technically speaking it wasn’t literally a wardrobe but rather the ‘King’s Wardrobe’, as it was known, or if we translate it into plain English, we could say “all the King’s stuff”.
[00:06:22] The King’s Wardrobe is thought to have contained something called the ‘Privy Wardrobe’, which kept armour and weapons made at the Tower of London, and the Great Wardrobe, which was where they kept King Edward’s clothes and jewellery.
[00:06:37] But in time it also became the home of coins and other valuables, important royal documents, fur, as well as other valuable things like spices.
[00:06:48] And as with Frying Pan Alley, there’s also a literary connection here.
[00:06:54] William Shakespeare, who lived close to the King’s Wardrobe sometime around the turn of the 16th century, described his property in his will as “being in Blackfriers in London, nere the Wardrobe.”
[00:07:09] If you were reading this and thinking “near the Wardrobe”?, well, this street was so well known that people simply referred to it as “the wardrobe”.
[00:07:19] So, can you go and see this wardrobe today?
[00:07:22] Unfortunately not. The King’s Wardrobe burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but you can certainly visit the street and feel smug about knowing where it got its name from.
[00:07:36] For our next street we only have to walk 10 minutes north from Wardrobe Place, to the strangely named Turnagain Lane.
[00:07:45] And indeed, walking, getting from one point to another, is going to play an important role in the story of Turnagain lane.
[00:07:54] Another important point to mention in this story is about a London river. And I’m not talking about the River Thames, the big river that runs from west to east, that cuts across the belly of the city.
[00:08:07] I’m talking about a river called the River Fleet. It doesn’t exist any more, but it used to run down Farringdon Street and join the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge.
[00:08:20] Crucially, there was no bridge to cross the Fleet in this part of Farringdon, so if you were walking down Turnagain Lane you’d have to ‘turn again’ and find a different route - it was, in other words, a dead end, and the street name an instruction.
[00:08:39] And though the river went dry in the 18th century, the name stuck and remains to this day. In fact, it you go to Turnagain Lane today you’ll find some slightly unattractive garages, so the instructions in the street name are just as valid as they were several hundred years ago.
[00:09:00] Now, the next on our list is a little more dramatic.
[00:09:04] It’s called Knightrider Street, and is just around the corner from Wardrobe Place.
[00:09:11] It’s Knight with a K, knight, a soldier in The Middle Ages, rather than night, the opposite of day.
[00:09:19] Knightrider Street allegedly got its name because it was the road that knights would travel down in mediaeval London to get to their jousting competitions.
[00:09:30] Jousting, in case this word is unfamiliar, was a form of duelling, or fighting, done by people on horseback with long lances, long poles, in the mediaeval era.
[00:09:42] And if you are more familiar with American pop culture than you are with mediaeval jousting, which would be understandable, you might remember that Knight Rider was also the name of a popular 1980s TV drama starring David Hasselhoff.
[00:09:57] There is a signed picture of David Hasselhoff in a pub on Knightrider street, but unfortunately the name of this street predates him by, well, almost 700 years, with its first recorded use being in 1322.
[00:10:15] Penultimate on our London list is Hanging Sword Alley, close to London’s famous Fleet Street, the place where all the big newspapers were traditionally based.
[00:10:25] Hanging Sword Alley allegedly dates back to the 16th century, if not before, but historians seem to think that it was first called Hanging Sword Alley in 1564 because of a sign for a fencing school that hung in the street.
[00:10:42] Fencing, by the way, is the sport where people fight with thin swords, which you might have seen in the Olympics.
[00:10:49] Interestingly, Hanging Sword Alley also had another name for a while in the 18th century when it became known as ‘Blood Bowl Alley’ after a well-known disreputable local pub called Blood Bowl House where a prostitute was caught trying to rob a client.
[00:11:07] And once again, this unusual street name also has a literary connection, appearing in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House.
[00:11:19] Finally, the last unusual street name on our London list, Bleeding Heart Yard, has two explanations, or origins, and two literary connections.
[00:11:31] The first, and perhaps the most believable story, but I'll let you be the judge, is that it took its name from a 16th century inn, a pub, called The Bleeding Heart.
[00:11:44] According to this story, the inn’s sign had a picture of the Virgin Mary’s heart being stabbed by several swords.
[00:11:52] This one seems logical, and is the type of thing that streets are typically named after.
[00:12:00] The other, slightly less believable but more exciting story, is that on a night in January of 1646 a bloody murder occurred in the yard.
[00:12:11] According to the story, which is more of an urban legend at this point, there was a ball, a party, that was taking place that night, and a strange man with a clawed hand appeared as a guest.
[00:12:26] He spent the night, the story goes, dancing with and charming a woman named Lady Hatton, a figure from England’s 17th century aristocracy.
[00:12:38] The only problem?
[00:12:39] Well, the morning after the party her bloodied body was found ripped apart in what is now known as Bleeding Heart Yard.
[00:12:49] Her heart, so the legend goes, was apparently found lying on the ground, still working and pumping out blood.
[00:12:59] Unlikely, perhaps, but it’s certainly a good story.
[00:13:04] And Bleeding Heart Yard also has a literary connection, and again it's the novelist most associated with London, Charles Dickens.
[00:13:13] In his novel Little Dorrit, Bleeding Heart Yard is the home of the Plornish family.
[00:13:19] But Bleeding Heart Yard’s literary connections go even further back than Dickens, first appearing in a collection of poems and stories published in 1837 known as the Ingoldsby Legends.
[00:13:34] In one of the stories, a woman - presumably Lady Hatton - makes a deal with the devil to become very wealthy, and during the housewarming of her new mansion, the party to celebrate her new home, the devil arrives, dances with her, and then rips out her heart and throws it into Bleeding Heart Yard, where’s it’s found still squirting out blood the next morning - hence the name.
[00:14:01] Well, however it got its name, Bleeding Heart Yard - and the name - remains to this day.
[00:14:09] So, there are six weird and wonderful street names from London, but I would be doing an injustice to the rest of the country if I didn’t at least mention a few more, as there are some wonderful stories of street names from elsewhere.
[00:14:23] So, without further ado, let me tell you the story of a street with an unusual name because, well, it’s called “The Street with No Name”.
[00:14:33] That’s actually it’s name, “The Street With No Name”, and it’s in the village of Teignmouth in Devon, to the south west of England.
[00:14:41] And the story of how it got its name, or how it didn’t get its name, perhaps, is somewhat of a sad one.
[00:14:49] The Street With No Name isn’t really a street, per se, it’s more like an alleyway between two larger streets.
[00:14:57] And it’s somewhat of an accidental street, it’s really just a gap between two rows of houses, but was considered large enough to be given a name, although not a real name.
[00:15:08] So, it’s a bit of a sad story if you ask me, but it's an interesting one nevertheless.
[00:15:16] And our final one is the bizarrely named Warning Tongue Lane in Doncaster, which is in South Yorkshire in the north of England.
[00:15:25] The legend goes that there’s somewhat of a spooky story to this lane, which runs through Doncaster and a woodland area, which was itself once known as Wailing Wood by locals.
[00:15:37] Wailing, in case you weren’t aware, is another way of saying screaming or crying, usually from pain or anger or fear.
[00:15:46] Anyway, Wailing Wood got its name, apparently, from an old story about a carriage which crashed in some fog on Warning Tongue Lane many years ago.
[00:15:58] A woman, so the story goes, died in the crash and is now thought to haunt the woods on foggy nights and warn people from driving down the lane, so they don’t meet the same fate as she did.
[00:16:11] And Warning Tongue Lane, you might have guessed, comes from her wailing warning that can be heard on misty nights.
[00:16:19] Spooky stuff indeed.
[00:16:22] So, there you go, six of the most unusual street names in London, and a couple more from further afield.
[00:16:30] All of these streets still exist today, and the London ones are actually surprisingly close together.
[00:16:38] I plotted them all on Google Maps, and it would only take 59 minutes for you to visit all six of them.
[00:16:45] So, if you are planning to a visit to London, and you want a challenge that you can do in under an hour, go and give it a go.
[00:16:53] Go to Knightrider Street and Bleeding Heart Yard, stop and watch the office workers dashing around from meeting to meeting, and you can feel smug and proud that you know, in all probability, a lot more than them about the weird and wonderful stories behind these street names.
[00:17:14] Ok then, that is it for today’s episode on unusual street names in London, with a couple of bonus ones from the rest of the country.
[00:17:22] It almost goes without saying that these are only a small, tiny selection, but an interesting one nonetheless.
[00:17:30] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:17:34] Had you heard the stories of any of these streets before?
[00:17:37] What about strange street names in your own country?
[00:17:40] What’s the most unusual street you’ve ever lived on?
[00:17:43] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:46] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:55] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:59] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are talking about something a little different. Today we’ll take a look at six of the most unusual street names in London.
[00:00:31] Some of them are steeped in history, while others make absolutely no sense at all or have more than one supposed origin, or explanation.
[00:00:41] There are literary connections, murder mysteries and legends.
[00:00:46] And in fact, for good measure, we’re going to include a couple more from outside the M25, from further afield, outside London, because there is indeed life outside the capital.
[00:00:57] OK then, let’s get into it and talk about some of the most unusual street names in London, and indeed in Britain.
[00:01:07] Now, before we start, it’s worth spending just a minute thinking about, reminding ourselves perhaps, about how streets get their names in the first place.
[00:01:17] Typically they’re named after places, after kings and queens or people of historical importance.
[00:01:25] Avenue Victor Hugo, Potsdamer Platz, Via Dante, Beijing Lu.
[00:01:31] And the UK is no exception. Most streets are named after places, attractions, or people.
[00:01:39] And to illustrate this in statistical terms, the most popular street names in the UK are, in this order, High Street, Station Road, Main Street, Park Road, and then Church Road.
[00:01:53] And it goes on - Oxford Road, London Road, Hill Road, King’s Street, you get the picture.
[00:02:00] None of these street names have particularly interesting stories, but there are plenty of streets that do, and many of them can be found within a very small area of London.
[00:02:13] So, without further ado, the first unusual street name on our list is Frying Pan Alley, in London’s East End.
[00:02:23] Frying Pan Alley is actually in a narrow alleyway in Spitalfields, an area of east London known for its famous market.
[00:02:31] And an alleyway is a narrow street or passage that runs between or behind buildings.
[00:02:38] So, how did Frying Pan Alley get its name?
[00:02:42] Well, you can probably guess part of it.
[00:02:45] It's thought to come from ironmongers that used to have shops in the alley and would hang their frying pans in the window or above the door to attract potential customers.
[00:02:57] On a quick language note, an ironmonger is someone who sells housing and gardening equipment, usually made from metal. And originally it meant someone who sells things made of iron.
[00:03:10] And if you find any word in English that ends in “monger”, it means someone who sells that thing - a fishmonger sells fish, for example. And it can even be used metaphorically, for ideas, for example - a scaremonger is someone who sells, or spreads, scary stories, and a hatemonger is someone who spreads hate, especially towards one group of people.
[00:03:37] But we’re getting distracted, let me get back to Frying Pan Alley, because there is more to it.
[00:03:44] The legend goes that one of these frying pan signs fell on someone walking down the alley, and shoppers then started walking on the other side of the street, causing the locals to call it Frying Pan Alley.
[00:03:58] Nowadays Frying Pan Alley is surrounded by modernist, glass fronted buildings and businesses, it’s in a really fancy area of London. But this is a relatively modern phenomenon.
[00:04:11] Even in the early 20th century it was in one of the poorest areas of the city.
[00:04:17] You can actually read about this specific street in the works of the famous American writer Jack London. He wrote a book called “The People of the Abyss”, which described the squalid, dirty or filthy, East End of London that he saw when he visited in 1902.
[00:04:35] In it, he described, and I’m quoting directly, “we cut off to the left into Spitalfields, and dived into Frying Pan Alley. A swarm of children cluttered the slimy pavement, for all the world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the bottom of a dry pond. In a narrow doorway… sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at her breasts grossly naked and libelling all the sacredness of motherhood.”
[00:05:04] If you go there today you’ll see lawyers and bankers, but, as you just heard, not much more than 100 years ago it was a very different place.
[00:05:16] Now, next on our list of unusual street names is Wardrobe Place, down in the City of London, London’s financial district, close to the Tower of London.
[00:05:27] A wardrobe, I’m sure you know, is the place where you keep your clothes, and it’s normally kept in the bedroom.
[00:05:36] So, why would a street be called “Wardrobe Place”? Who kept their wardrobe outside, or who had a wardrobe so large and important that an entire street would be named after it?
[00:05:49] Well, the owner of the wardrobe in question was King Edward I of England, who ruled in the 13th century.
[00:05:57] And “wardrobe”, when referring to a king or queen, was something slightly more grand than a simple IKEA cupboard that you or I might keep our clothes in.
[00:06:09] Technically speaking it wasn’t literally a wardrobe but rather the ‘King’s Wardrobe’, as it was known, or if we translate it into plain English, we could say “all the King’s stuff”.
[00:06:22] The King’s Wardrobe is thought to have contained something called the ‘Privy Wardrobe’, which kept armour and weapons made at the Tower of London, and the Great Wardrobe, which was where they kept King Edward’s clothes and jewellery.
[00:06:37] But in time it also became the home of coins and other valuables, important royal documents, fur, as well as other valuable things like spices.
[00:06:48] And as with Frying Pan Alley, there’s also a literary connection here.
[00:06:54] William Shakespeare, who lived close to the King’s Wardrobe sometime around the turn of the 16th century, described his property in his will as “being in Blackfriers in London, nere the Wardrobe.”
[00:07:09] If you were reading this and thinking “near the Wardrobe”?, well, this street was so well known that people simply referred to it as “the wardrobe”.
[00:07:19] So, can you go and see this wardrobe today?
[00:07:22] Unfortunately not. The King’s Wardrobe burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but you can certainly visit the street and feel smug about knowing where it got its name from.
[00:07:36] For our next street we only have to walk 10 minutes north from Wardrobe Place, to the strangely named Turnagain Lane.
[00:07:45] And indeed, walking, getting from one point to another, is going to play an important role in the story of Turnagain lane.
[00:07:54] Another important point to mention in this story is about a London river. And I’m not talking about the River Thames, the big river that runs from west to east, that cuts across the belly of the city.
[00:08:07] I’m talking about a river called the River Fleet. It doesn’t exist any more, but it used to run down Farringdon Street and join the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge.
[00:08:20] Crucially, there was no bridge to cross the Fleet in this part of Farringdon, so if you were walking down Turnagain Lane you’d have to ‘turn again’ and find a different route - it was, in other words, a dead end, and the street name an instruction.
[00:08:39] And though the river went dry in the 18th century, the name stuck and remains to this day. In fact, it you go to Turnagain Lane today you’ll find some slightly unattractive garages, so the instructions in the street name are just as valid as they were several hundred years ago.
[00:09:00] Now, the next on our list is a little more dramatic.
[00:09:04] It’s called Knightrider Street, and is just around the corner from Wardrobe Place.
[00:09:11] It’s Knight with a K, knight, a soldier in The Middle Ages, rather than night, the opposite of day.
[00:09:19] Knightrider Street allegedly got its name because it was the road that knights would travel down in mediaeval London to get to their jousting competitions.
[00:09:30] Jousting, in case this word is unfamiliar, was a form of duelling, or fighting, done by people on horseback with long lances, long poles, in the mediaeval era.
[00:09:42] And if you are more familiar with American pop culture than you are with mediaeval jousting, which would be understandable, you might remember that Knight Rider was also the name of a popular 1980s TV drama starring David Hasselhoff.
[00:09:57] There is a signed picture of David Hasselhoff in a pub on Knightrider street, but unfortunately the name of this street predates him by, well, almost 700 years, with its first recorded use being in 1322.
[00:10:15] Penultimate on our London list is Hanging Sword Alley, close to London’s famous Fleet Street, the place where all the big newspapers were traditionally based.
[00:10:25] Hanging Sword Alley allegedly dates back to the 16th century, if not before, but historians seem to think that it was first called Hanging Sword Alley in 1564 because of a sign for a fencing school that hung in the street.
[00:10:42] Fencing, by the way, is the sport where people fight with thin swords, which you might have seen in the Olympics.
[00:10:49] Interestingly, Hanging Sword Alley also had another name for a while in the 18th century when it became known as ‘Blood Bowl Alley’ after a well-known disreputable local pub called Blood Bowl House where a prostitute was caught trying to rob a client.
[00:11:07] And once again, this unusual street name also has a literary connection, appearing in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House.
[00:11:19] Finally, the last unusual street name on our London list, Bleeding Heart Yard, has two explanations, or origins, and two literary connections.
[00:11:31] The first, and perhaps the most believable story, but I'll let you be the judge, is that it took its name from a 16th century inn, a pub, called The Bleeding Heart.
[00:11:44] According to this story, the inn’s sign had a picture of the Virgin Mary’s heart being stabbed by several swords.
[00:11:52] This one seems logical, and is the type of thing that streets are typically named after.
[00:12:00] The other, slightly less believable but more exciting story, is that on a night in January of 1646 a bloody murder occurred in the yard.
[00:12:11] According to the story, which is more of an urban legend at this point, there was a ball, a party, that was taking place that night, and a strange man with a clawed hand appeared as a guest.
[00:12:26] He spent the night, the story goes, dancing with and charming a woman named Lady Hatton, a figure from England’s 17th century aristocracy.
[00:12:38] The only problem?
[00:12:39] Well, the morning after the party her bloodied body was found ripped apart in what is now known as Bleeding Heart Yard.
[00:12:49] Her heart, so the legend goes, was apparently found lying on the ground, still working and pumping out blood.
[00:12:59] Unlikely, perhaps, but it’s certainly a good story.
[00:13:04] And Bleeding Heart Yard also has a literary connection, and again it's the novelist most associated with London, Charles Dickens.
[00:13:13] In his novel Little Dorrit, Bleeding Heart Yard is the home of the Plornish family.
[00:13:19] But Bleeding Heart Yard’s literary connections go even further back than Dickens, first appearing in a collection of poems and stories published in 1837 known as the Ingoldsby Legends.
[00:13:34] In one of the stories, a woman - presumably Lady Hatton - makes a deal with the devil to become very wealthy, and during the housewarming of her new mansion, the party to celebrate her new home, the devil arrives, dances with her, and then rips out her heart and throws it into Bleeding Heart Yard, where’s it’s found still squirting out blood the next morning - hence the name.
[00:14:01] Well, however it got its name, Bleeding Heart Yard - and the name - remains to this day.
[00:14:09] So, there are six weird and wonderful street names from London, but I would be doing an injustice to the rest of the country if I didn’t at least mention a few more, as there are some wonderful stories of street names from elsewhere.
[00:14:23] So, without further ado, let me tell you the story of a street with an unusual name because, well, it’s called “The Street with No Name”.
[00:14:33] That’s actually it’s name, “The Street With No Name”, and it’s in the village of Teignmouth in Devon, to the south west of England.
[00:14:41] And the story of how it got its name, or how it didn’t get its name, perhaps, is somewhat of a sad one.
[00:14:49] The Street With No Name isn’t really a street, per se, it’s more like an alleyway between two larger streets.
[00:14:57] And it’s somewhat of an accidental street, it’s really just a gap between two rows of houses, but was considered large enough to be given a name, although not a real name.
[00:15:08] So, it’s a bit of a sad story if you ask me, but it's an interesting one nevertheless.
[00:15:16] And our final one is the bizarrely named Warning Tongue Lane in Doncaster, which is in South Yorkshire in the north of England.
[00:15:25] The legend goes that there’s somewhat of a spooky story to this lane, which runs through Doncaster and a woodland area, which was itself once known as Wailing Wood by locals.
[00:15:37] Wailing, in case you weren’t aware, is another way of saying screaming or crying, usually from pain or anger or fear.
[00:15:46] Anyway, Wailing Wood got its name, apparently, from an old story about a carriage which crashed in some fog on Warning Tongue Lane many years ago.
[00:15:58] A woman, so the story goes, died in the crash and is now thought to haunt the woods on foggy nights and warn people from driving down the lane, so they don’t meet the same fate as she did.
[00:16:11] And Warning Tongue Lane, you might have guessed, comes from her wailing warning that can be heard on misty nights.
[00:16:19] Spooky stuff indeed.
[00:16:22] So, there you go, six of the most unusual street names in London, and a couple more from further afield.
[00:16:30] All of these streets still exist today, and the London ones are actually surprisingly close together.
[00:16:38] I plotted them all on Google Maps, and it would only take 59 minutes for you to visit all six of them.
[00:16:45] So, if you are planning to a visit to London, and you want a challenge that you can do in under an hour, go and give it a go.
[00:16:53] Go to Knightrider Street and Bleeding Heart Yard, stop and watch the office workers dashing around from meeting to meeting, and you can feel smug and proud that you know, in all probability, a lot more than them about the weird and wonderful stories behind these street names.
[00:17:14] Ok then, that is it for today’s episode on unusual street names in London, with a couple of bonus ones from the rest of the country.
[00:17:22] It almost goes without saying that these are only a small, tiny selection, but an interesting one nonetheless.
[00:17:30] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:17:34] Had you heard the stories of any of these streets before?
[00:17:37] What about strange street names in your own country?
[00:17:40] What’s the most unusual street you’ve ever lived on?
[00:17:43] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:46] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:55] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:59] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
