the British are a strange type, eating strange stuff, and naming roads very strange names

Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate is one of the smallest streets in York, England, if not the smallest. It is between Colliergate and Fossgate and intersects Pavement and the Stonebow in York city centre.

Grope Lane, in the center of Shrewsbury used to be Gropecunt Lane. It isn’t the only Gropecunt Lane in England, there are more than a dozen

The history of Gropecunt Lane disrupts prevailing ideas about how the medieval English dealt with prostitution. In theory, prostitution had to take place outside the city walls. In London, in 1310, prostitutes were formally banished to the outskirts of the city.
But the Gropecunt Lanes challenge this version of England’s sexual history, because Gropecunt Lanes were hardly in the suburbs; in fact, they are near the main markets.
To put it Britishly, as English historian Derek Keene has, “In shops, perhaps, it was customary to agree, or to force, assignations which were consummated nearby.” The Gropecunt Lane name wasn’t just descriptive; it was also informative. The streets were often serving demands from outsiders— countrymen and farmers in market towns, sailors in port towns, and priests in episcopal towns. So their central locations made perfect sense.

The British often celebrate their rude street names, though understanding why they’re rude requires a schoolboy’s knowledge of slang. For a people considered demure, their vocabulary of filthy words is truly impressive.

Busloads of tourists detour to take pictures in front of signs for Cracknuts Lane, St. Gregory’s Back Alley, Slutshole Road, and Cockshut Lane.

 An Oxford resident complained that he finds his street name most awkward when he is sitting with “official people,” and they ask, “where do you live?” His answer? “Crotch Crescent.”

Rob Bailey and Ed Hurst’s book Rude Britain, a pirate’s chest of filthy place names, says that Butthole Road was named after a water butt and that Booty Lane is named either after bootmakers, Viking booty, or the Booty family. East Breast Street probably comes from the word for hill and Backside Lane is so called because it is at the rear of the village. Upperthong Street is on a narrow strip of lane. Little Bushey Lane is derived from the Old English for “enclosure near a thicket.” Cumloden Court is probably from Gaelic words meaning “the pool that retains water.” Ass House Lane? Your guess is as good as mine.


But boring names, so often duplicated, are far more confusing for a city government than ridiculous ones.

London long lacked a central body to assign street names, leaving the task to private developers who didn’t have much imagination. As Judith Flanders, a biographer of Dickensian London, recounts, “In 1853, London had twenty-five Albert and twenty-five Victoria Streets, thirty-seven King and twenty-seven Queen Streets, twenty-two Princess, seventeen Dukes, thirty-four Yorks, and twenty-three Gloucesters.”

“Do all builders name streets after their wives, or in compliment to their sons and daughters?” the Spectator magazine asked its readers wearily in 1869, a few years later. “And are there 35 builders with wives named Mary, and 13 with daughters named Mary Ann spelt so? There are 7 places, roads, and streets called Emily, 4 Emma, 7 Ellen, 10 Eliza, 58 Elizabeth—23 of them being called Elizabeth Place,—13 Jane, 53 Ann and so on and on.” Add to that “64 Charles Streets, 37 Edward Streets, 47 James Streets, besides 27 James Places, 24 Frederick Places, and 36 Henry Streets.” Other streets were named “for nearly every fruit, and for every flower we have been able to think of in five minutes.” But the “climax of imbecility” was New Street—fifty-two of them in all.

written by Deirdre Mask, and excerpted from The Address Book by Deirdre Mask.

https://lithub.com/how-did-england-get-its-bizarro-street-names/?utm_source=digg
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/whipmawhopmagate