A Ruislip By Any Other Name…

By · August 12, 2010 at 12:00 pm · No comments · Miscellaneous · Report an error ·

westendcyclehire.jpeg
Image courtesy of prkn under a creative commons licence

One-little commented side-effect of London’s cycle hire scheme has been the insight it’s given us into what TfL thinks different bits of London are actually called.

Going by the names on the cycle docking stations, the transport supremos are under the impression that the city has districts called Monument, Temple and Guildhall. There’s no Blackfriars, however, no St Pancras, and Vauxhall has swallowed Lambeth whole. Liverpool Street is an area, despite being a street; Old Street, though, isn’t, and is instead covered by the archaic St Luke’s.

Rather than choose whether the name Marylebone should apply to the historic parish north or Oxford Street, or the smaller area immediately around the station, someone up there has decided it includes both. Southwark, though, is deemed to cover neither its historic centre, nor the entire borough, but a few streets round the Southwark tube station (which was anyway blatantly only called that because they couldn’t think of another name). Clerkenwell covers a vast, L-shaped area, with a bite taken out of it belonging to Finsbury. Borough seems to consist of some of the less salubrious streets south and east of its more affluent neighbour, The Borough.

These choices, we’d argue, matter. Being plastered all over highly visible public transport assets, these names are likely to stick: as Kings Cross replaced Battlebridge, and New Cross Gate elbowed out Hatcham, their visibility is likely to drive usage and convention. How long can it be before people who live a mile from the green and 20 seconds from La Scala will be saying they live in Clerkenwell, because the sign tells them they do?

So – are there any other cartographical oddities out there? Any place names that TfL seems to have just made up? What have they got wrong?

Tagged: , ,

Report an error

  • http://undefined jamesu

    Nice post. Well as someone who lived in St Lukes I never used the name (no one knows where it is) or the alternative ‘Finsbury’ – confused with ‘+park’ all too often. Then of course it’s also called Bunhill Ward – not a clue.

    I settled on ‘Old Street’, cause that’s the stations name and people knew where it was. So you’re right, these things are important.

    I would have Thought ‘Street Name, Postcode’ would have worked perfectly without confusion – ‘Hampton Street, SE1′, ‘Marylebone Lane, W1′, etc.

    As for Southwark Tube, you couldn’t be more wrong – they argued for AGES about it – the estate agents wanted to to be called “The Cut” (trendy) not “Southwark” (poor).

  • http://undefined MatStace

    The docking station on Queen Street in EC4N (just outside the Dominos Pizza, and halfway between Cannon Street and Mansion House stations, is apparently “Queen Street, Bank” rather than “Queen Street, City” (or even better “Queen Street, Walbrook”)

  • http://undefined Tractive

    I believe the naming system is the one that has already been created for Legible London – so it matches tat scheme (and it’s Legible London mapping on the cycle hire totems).

  • Jonn

    @MatStace The city seems to be divided into a huge number of place names covering about four streets each: I’ve counted Tower, Monument, Bank, St Pauls, Farringdon, Barbican, Guildhall, Moorgate, Liverpool Street, Aldgate. It’s like they’ve brought back the old City wards but given them new names.

    @Tractive That makes sense, but it kind of backs up my point… In the 19th century, a lot of London place names were, ah, displaced because the arrival of tube stations change the convention. Hence New Cross Gate, Angel etc. The rise of the Legible London signs may well change everything again.

  • http://undefined Alexander

    There’s a station at the south side of Blackfriars Bridge that’s called “Poured Lines” – had no idea what that meant until I read this article:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5315186.stm

  • http://www.karinski.net Talia

    And talking of wrong names, one that annoys me most is people calling the Scala, La Scala!

←
→