From: Benjamin Lukoff )
Subject: High Street Kensington Station
Date: 2000/01/29

If the actual name of the street is KENSINGTON HIGH STREET,
why is the station called HIGH STREET KENSINGTON?

Only 54 months late, but I think I've figured it out.

The London County Council decided at some point (1930s I think) that it was
going to ensure there were no duplicate road names in its area, and took to
renaming vast tracts of the county of London. I suspect that prior to this
date, Kensington High St, Clapham High St, Stepney High St etc, and the
biggest mouthful of them all St Johns Wood High St, had all been called
"High St". Obviously "High St" would have been a crap name for a station.
The station could just as well have been called ""Kensington High St" but
they happened to pick "High St Kensington" instead. When the streets were
renamed, all of the High Streets in London had the district name prefixed,
creating the present anomaly. I suppose this was also when the mouthful
"Stoke Newington Church Street" was created.

Other possibly related station name anomalies:

Bond St (did New Bond St used to be called Bond St before the 1930s?)

Marlborough Rd station (now closed, but by a road called "Marlborough
Place", presumably renamed in the 1930s)

I believe Queenstown Road Battersea station was called Queens Road Battersea
for many years after the road had changed its name from Queens Rd to
Queenstown Road.

York Rd Station - also closed, but on a road called York Way after being
renamed in the same project.

BTW, I was going to ask if St Johns Wood High St was the the only
quintuple-barrel road name in Britain, but the first page on which I opened
the A-Z contained "Royal Albert Dock Spine Road"!

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

John Rowland wrote:
From: Benjamin Lukoff )
Subject: High Street Kensington Station
Date: 2000/01/29


If the actual name of the street is KENSINGTON HIGH STREET,
why is the station called HIGH STREET KENSINGTON?


Only 54 months late, but I think I've figured it out.

The London County Council decided at some point (1930s I think) that it was
going to ensure there were no duplicate road names in its area, and took to
renaming vast tracts of the county of London. I suspect that prior to this
date, Kensington High St, Clapham High St, Stepney High St etc, and the
biggest mouthful of them all St Johns Wood High St, had all been called
"High St". Obviously "High St" would have been a crap name for a station.
The station could just as well have been called ""Kensington High St" but
they happened to pick "High St Kensington" instead. When the streets were
renamed, all of the High Streets in London had the district name prefixed,
creating the present anomaly. I suppose this was also when the mouthful
"Stoke Newington Church Street" was created.

Interesting, I've wondered that too... the problem is that many people -
especially visitors or newcomers - use Tube stations as landmarks, so
just as when someone refers to "Tottenham Court Road" they invariably
mean St Giles Circus, most students at Imperial refer to Kensington High
St as High St Ken. It seems to roll off the tongue a bit better too.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

In article ,
"John Rowland" wrote:
From: Benjamin Lukoff )

If the actual name of the street is KENSINGTON HIGH STREET,
why is the station called HIGH STREET KENSINGTON?

Only 54 months late, but I think I've figured it out.

The London County Council decided at some point (1930s I think) that it was
going to ensure there were no duplicate road names in its area, and took to
renaming vast tracts of the county of London.

It started earlier than that. The Metropolitan Board of Works (1855-1889)
had begun the work of renaming streets to remove duplicates and stop
people getting post intended for the occupant of the same property on a
different street of the same name. It changed 3,000 names in its time.
The LCC had to be prodded by the Post Office to continue it, and by 1935
it had changed 2,700 names. At this point it began to see light at the
end of the tunnel and took a policy decision that there were to be no
duplicated names at all. In many libraries in London you will find the
LCC publication giving the names of streets in London.

They also sometimes changed the numbering, adopting a uniform scheme
that the smallest number would be the closest part of the street to
St. Paul's Cathedral.

Incidentally are there only two streets in London which have fractional
numbers in them? (Balls Pond Road and London Wall)

--
http://www.election.demon.co.uk
"The guilty party was the Liberal Democrats and they were hardened offenders,
and coded racism was again in evidence in leaflets distributed in September
1993." - Nigel Copsey, "Contemporary British Fascism", page 62.

John Rowland wrote:
From: Benjamin Lukoff )
Subject: High Street Kensington Station
Date: 2000/01/29

If the actual name of the street is KENSINGTON HIGH STREET,
why is the station called HIGH STREET KENSINGTON?

Only 54 months late, but I think I've figured it out.

The London County Council decided at some point (1930s I think)
that it was going to ensure there were no duplicate road names in
its area, and took to renaming vast tracts of the county of London.
I suspect that prior to this date, Kensington High St, Clapham High
St, Stepney High St etc, and the biggest mouthful of them all St
Johns Wood High St, had all been called "High St". Obviously "High
St" would have been a crap name for a station. The station could
just as well have been called ""Kensington High St" but they
happened to pick "High St Kensington" instead.

According to Douglas Rose, the station was opened as "Kensington (High
Street)" in 1868, but was gradually renamed as "High Street Kensington"
by 1880, perhaps to avoid confusion with Kensington (Addison Road), the
present Kensington Olympia.

Before D stock was introduced on the District, the destination boards on
the front of the old CO/CP stock said just "High Street".

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

In message , at
00:29:15 on Sun, 15 Aug 2004, David Boothroyd
remarked:
They also sometimes changed the numbering, adopting a uniform scheme
that the smallest number would be the closest part of the street to
St. Paul's Cathedral.

Not perhaps to St Pauls Cathedral, but to the central Post Office just
north of the Cathedral, after which the tube station now known as St
Pauls was originally named.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
00:29:15 on Sun, 15 Aug 2004, David Boothroyd
remarked:
They also sometimes changed the numbering, adopting a uniform
scheme that the smallest number would be the closest part of the
street to St. Paul's Cathedral.

Not perhaps to St Pauls Cathedral, but to the central Post Office
just north of the Cathedral, after which the tube station now known
as St Pauls was originally named.

According to http://www.gendocs.demon.co.uk/lon-str.html , the aim was
of the 1888 renumbering was to arrange for the lowest number to be
closest to the *local* post office.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

"David Boothroyd" wrote in message
...

The Metropolitan Board of Works (1855-1889)
had begun the work of renaming streets to remove
duplicates and stop people getting post intended for
the occupant of the same property on a different street
of the same name. It changed 3,000 names in its time.
The LCC had to be prodded by the Post Office to
continue it, and by 1935 it had changed 2,700 names.
At this point it began to see light at the end of the tunnel
and took a policy decision that there were to be no
duplicated names at all.

Thanks. I've seen a lot of street signs in North London that say something
like "Smith St N" instead of "Smith St N1". Do these signs date from an
interim period where names were unique to each sector but not to the whole
county? If not, what was the point of them?

Incidentally are there only two streets in
London which have fractional numbers in them?
(Balls Pond Road and London Wall)

I think there's one in Barnard Hill, N10. Also, The Vale in Childs Hill has
a number 0.

Incidentally, in HA5 there are two Pinner Roads, one at each end of the
area. Are there any other duplicated roads within a single postcode area
(not including cases where a single road has become split)?

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

"Dave Arquati" a écrit dans le message de
...
John Rowland wrote:
From: Benjamin Lukoff )
Subject: High Street Kensington Station
Date: 2000/01/29


If the actual name of the street is KENSINGTON HIGH STREET,
why is the station called HIGH STREET KENSINGTON?


Only 54 months late, but I think I've figured it out.

The London County Council decided at some point (1930s I think) that it
was
going to ensure there were no duplicate road names in its area, and took
to
renaming vast tracts of the county of London. I suspect that prior to
this
date, Kensington High St, Clapham High St, Stepney High St etc, and the
biggest mouthful of them all St Johns Wood High St, had all been called
"High St". Obviously "High St" would have been a crap name for a
station.
The station could just as well have been called ""Kensington High St"
but
they happened to pick "High St Kensington" instead. When the streets
were
renamed, all of the High Streets in London had the district name
prefixed,
creating the present anomaly. I suppose this was also when the mouthful
"Stoke Newington Church Street" was created.

Interesting, I've wondered that too... the problem is that many people -
especially visitors or newcomers - use Tube stations as landmarks, so
just as when someone refers to "Tottenham Court Road" they invariably
mean St Giles Circus, most students at Imperial refer to Kensington High
St as High St Ken. It seems to roll off the tongue a bit better too.

Is it only me who thinks 'High St. Ken' sounds more like the name of a
church ;-)

IMHO the basic problem is that general English usage requires any additional
word(s) specifying which of various options applies to precede the generic
name (IOW: we say eg 'East Acton' rather than 'Acton East') but the
convention in making lists is to adopt a simple alphabetic order. So such
lists fail to group closely related names together, and anybody consulting
one has no simple way of finding out if a particular name is part of such a
group or not.

One solution would be to adopt the 'army' practice of putting the generic
name first : eg 'brush, hair' followed by 'brush, paint' ; so that a list of
station names would have eg Acton followed by Central, East, North, South,
Town and West, regardless of the presentation on station nameboards. Or
would that only compound the confusion?

Regards,

- Alan (in Brussels - mind the spamtrap)

John Rowland wrote:
"David Boothroyd" wrote in message
...

The Metropolitan Board of Works (1855-1889)
had begun the work of renaming streets to remove
duplicates and stop people getting post intended for
the occupant of the same property on a different street
of the same name. It changed 3,000 names in its time.
The LCC had to be prodded by the Post Office to
continue it, and by 1935 it had changed 2,700 names.
At this point it began to see light at the end of the tunnel
and took a policy decision that there were to be no
duplicated names at all.

Thanks. I've seen a lot of street signs in North London that say
something like "Smith St N" instead of "Smith St N1". Do these signs
date from an interim period where names were unique to each sector
but not to the whole county? If not, what was the point of them?

I believe there was a time when the postal districts were simply North,
West, East etc. It was later that they were sub divided into smaller areas
with a number added to the original, hence W1, SW19 etc. Then of course came
the current postcodes.

Found this:-
http://www.wikisearch.net/en/wikiped..._district.html



Incidentally are there only two streets in
London which have fractional numbers in them?
(Balls Pond Road and London Wall)

I think there's one in Barnard Hill, N10. Also, The Vale in Childs
Hill has a number 0.

Incidentally, in HA5 there are two Pinner Roads, one at each end of
the area. Are there any other duplicated roads within a single
postcode area (not including cases where a single road has become
split)?

David Boothroyd wrote in news:david-
:


Incidentally are there only two streets in London which have fractional
numbers in them? (Balls Pond Road and London Wall)

There is a 59 1/2 Southwark street !