Opening Princesshay in 1949

 I thought that I had posted this in my blog, many years ago, but couldn't find it, so here is a piece of Exeter history.

Princesshay in “The Times”

 

Some time ago, I read a collection of the fourth leaders from “The Times” and came across the following.  In the days when “The Times” printed advertisements on its front page, the fourth editorial was often a light-hearted look at some aspect of the news, a habit which some newspapers continue.  The dedication of Princesshay in October 1949 prompted this offering:

 

The Times, October 25, 1949; page 5; Issue 51521; col D

 

Full Text: Copyright 1949, The Times

 

Street Names

On her recent visit to Exeter PRINCESS ELIZABETH inaugurated the rebuilding of the bombed parts of the city by naming a new street Princesshay. This was a pleasant inspiration, not only because it will permanently recall a happy occasion in Exeter's history, but because the new name conforms with the two time-­honoured ones of its main thoroughfares, Northernhay and Southernhay. It is not all city fathers that have so felicitous a model ready to their hands, and the naming of new streets must often present a difficult problem. Even as the postman probably, and the inquiring visitor certainly, prefers a row of numbered houses to "Chez nous" and "Glenside," so there is much to be said for some such system as that of the New York streets, combining numbers with points of the compass. It is a great help to the stranger striving to find his way, but it is a plan lacking something of romance and so dis­appointing to those who love names for their own sake. It is again a regrettable fact that street names making the strongest appeal to the sightseer may not be so agreeable to the inhabitants, especially those who earn their living there. There is, if memory serves, a Quiet Street in Bath and a Silent Street in lpswich. Here are two enchanting names which "impart to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on his boots" ; but they might con­ceivably be deemed bad for business. A man could dwell happily for ever in Crooked Usage, but he might think twice before setting up his shop there.

 

Yet this is a view that may easily be exaggerated and sometimes the inhabitants have a greater love for what is old and romantic and so far better sense than the local authorities. On the outskirts of a great western city there is a road called Plunder Street, recalling the time when highwaymen lay in wait there for coaches. It was proposed, doubtless with the best intentions, to change the name to one of a deadly and decent dullness, whereupon there was a levy en masse of the neigh­bourhood to protest against the outrage and Plunder Street gloriously remains. There is often much useful knowledge to be learnt from street names. Major Pendennis, who begged his nephew to read Debrett daily in order to avoid social solecisms, must often have felt his breast swell as he contemplated the streets and squares of London, so full of instruction are their names as to the seats and subsidiary titles of noble families. Changes there must be and the cluster of streets which once, we are told, commemorated at full length CHARLES VILLIERS, Duke of BUCKINGHAM, is not quite what it was; but if “Of Alley” has long departed, Villiers Street and Bucking­ham Street are still there. Much humbler and more local history is often to be traced. There must be numberless villages in England which still have a Mill Lane. The mill is gone but the sound of its sails still agreeably haunts the lane. District councils ought to deal very tenderly with these ancient names and if they want new ones an old map will often provide some. thing far better than their own prosaic and lamentable inventions.

 

(notes: yes, there is a “Quiet Street” in Bath, a “Silent Street” in Ipswich, which got the name through the rather dubious distinction of having all its inhabitants die within a single plague of illness, “Plunder Street” is in Cleeve in Somerset, “Crooked Usage” is an up-market address in Finchley, and there is a side street off the Strand with a sign stating that it was formerly “Of Alley”.  Major Pendennis is a snob who features in Thackeray’s novel “Pendennis”.)

 

David Smith