Road name near Holbrook

Although name signs like this are relatively modern, roads have been named for hundreds of years, and today road names are a useful resource for historians. We do not know what names the Romans actually gave their routes, but after their departure they were called ‘streets’ as in Ryknild Street, which ran from Derby to Chesterfield. Many place names e.g. ‘Stretton’ reflect this. Anglo-Saxons used the noun ‘way’ for their roads, and this survives in many expressions such as ‘highway’ and ‘byway’. The word ‘road’ was not common until the seventeenth century, and may be derived from the verb ‘rode’.

The most obvious type of name gives the destination of the road, hence Chesterfield Road or Brassington Lane. Another refers to some feature found on the road, either natural or man-made, such as Chapel Lane or Cuckoostone Lane. In the case of an ancient route like Hearthstone Lane, running from Cromford to Riber, there is no obvious Stone, raising the question ‘Where was it?’

This sign in The Park in Nottingham is a valuable clue that the ‘Walk’ led to an ancient group of caves (now inaccessible) that contained a rock-cut chapel. Other names refer to the state of the road: Long Lane, Marsh Lane, New Road. In this last case, the name suggests that there is an ‘old road’ that could be investigated.

Many road names refer to natural features using archaic vocabulary. ‘Shaw’ or ‘Carr’ names are common in Derbyshire, and mean a wood on a steep slope, as in Leashaw, Upper Holloway. ‘Sitch’ is Anglo-Saxon for a small stream. ‘Well’ endings as in Bakewell suggest a natural spring.

A few names refer to an individual, either familiarly in ‘Samuel’s Lane’ or more grandly with ‘Via Gellia’, named by Anthony Gell, the road developer, after himself in pseudo-Roman style.

But there will always be names that elude discovery, or can only be the subject of wild guesswork. What’s the story behind Lickpenny Lane, for instance, or the Clatterway at Bonsall? Or did Wapentake Lane near Kirk Ireton really lead to the site of the ancient Wapentake?