STREET NAMES

There are sadly few surviving names which describe the natural state of the ridge and the valleys, except for the gorsty greens and closes and the many moors (boggy meadows) beside the watercourses. Cranemore Street takes its name from the meadow in which the canal reservoir was made nearby. Only one other name yields geographical information, that of Rocky Lane: on the steep slope to Aston Brook the lane was worn down into the sandstone, a well-named holloway in solid rock.

The old road names are few and self-explanatory, as are Wharf and Barrack Streets. Cuckoo Lane led to the Cuckoo Inn on Aston Road, and the bridge over Fazeley Canal took the same name. Mill and Oxygen Street refer to a factory by the canal junction and a chemical works. There are many streets with surnames and forenames that cannot now be explained, but some can be. Lister was last-but-one baronet of the family recalled in Holt (formerly spelt Holte) Street. Heneage Legge inherited the estates, Bagot and Digby were 'heirs by default'.

Allesley and Chattaway were contemporary families. Earl Howe and the Duke of Dartmouth were C19th landowners.
Bracebridge was the married name of Mary, last of the Holtes. Ashte(a)d is the only local example of a district named after an individual, Dr. John Ash. Attorney Brook and his associate Windsor laid out the Ashted estate. Eliot Street was formerly Wellington Place in honour of the great soldier, Cook Street began as Trafalgar Road, and Scholefield Street honours Birmingham's first mayor. Cheatham was the Nechells innkeeper! Rupert, Oliver, and Cromwell Streets show someone's interest in the Civil War two centuries after its end, while Alma Crescent, Cardigan and Inkerman Streets date themselves to the years following the Crimean War.

Here as elsewhere London names have been appropriated - Long Acre and Holborn Full, Bloomsbury and Vauxhall for streets and districts, Hyde Park Corner for the tollgate junction; that was only a crossroads away from High Park Corner, at the meeting on Nechells Green of Rocky Lane, Nechells Place, and Nechells Park Road. In the last century but before redevelopment a number of thoroughfares changed their names - George to Trevor Street, Ann to Austin, Smith to Cranbury, Claverdon Street to Duddeston Manor Road, Ratcliff to Galton, and Adelaide to Erskine Street.

Index