#streetnames — Public Fediverse posts

🥴 Ah, San Francisco—a city so proud of its labyrinth of street names, it's practically a carnival game for the directionally challenged. 🗺️ Instead of useful info, we've got a digital shrug with a side of server error sauce. 🍝 Bon appétit, navigators!
https://j-nelson.net/san-francisco-streets-with-similar-names/ #SanFrancisco #StreetNames #NavigationErrors #DigitalShrug #ServerError #CarnivalGame #HackerNews #ngated

San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

https://j-nelson.net/san-francisco-streets-with-similar-names/

#HackerNews #SanFrancisco #Streets #ConfusingNames #CityNavigation #UrbanExploration #StreetNames

San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

https://j-nelson.net/san-francisco-streets-with-similar-names/

#HackerNews #SanFrancisco #Streets #ConfusingNames #CityNavigation #UrbanExploration #StreetNames

San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

https://j-nelson.net/san-francisco-streets-with-similar-names/

#HackerNews #SanFrancisco #Streets #ConfusingNames #CityNavigation #UrbanExploration #StreetNames

San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

https://j-nelson.net/san-francisco-streets-with-similar-names/

#HackerNews #SanFrancisco #Streets #ConfusingNames #CityNavigation #UrbanExploration #StreetNames

San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

https://j-nelson.net/san-francisco-streets-with-similar-names/

#HackerNews #SanFrancisco #Streets #ConfusingNames #CityNavigation #UrbanExploration #StreetNames

https://www.europesays.com/uk/837516/ Ex-Prince Andrew Still Holds Royal Title Here, Locals Demand Change — Report #BritishColumbia #ExPrinceAndrew #JeffreyEpstein #OakBay #PrinceAndrew #PublicScrutiny #Royal #RoyalFamilies #RoyalFamily #Royals #StreetNames

Donegal News: Council request Google Maps change misnamed Letterkenny road. “The name was coined in error by Google Maps a number of years ago, but much to the annoyance of locals, it has stuck, so much so that Donegal County Council have even referred to the road as the Grange Road…. This confusion has led to problems for delivery drivers, taxis and people who have recently moved to the […]

Donegal News: Council request Google Maps change misnamed Letterkenny road. “The name was coined in error by Google Maps a number of years ago, but much to the annoyance of locals, it has stuck, so much so that Donegal County Council have even referred to the road as the Grange Road…. This confusion has led to problems for delivery drivers, taxis and people who have recently moved to the […]

Donegal News: Council request Google Maps change misnamed Letterkenny road. “The name was coined in error by Google Maps a number of years ago, but much to the annoyance of locals, it has stuck, so much so that Donegal County Council have even referred to the road as the Grange Road…. This confusion has led to problems for delivery drivers, taxis and people who have recently moved to the […]

Donegal News: Council request Google Maps change misnamed Letterkenny road. “The name was coined in error by Google Maps a number of years ago, but much to the annoyance of locals, it has stuck, so much so that Donegal County Council have even referred to the road as the Grange Road…. This confusion has led to problems for delivery drivers, taxis and people who have recently moved to the […]

I wrote this back in 2020 https://bikestylelife.com/2020/01/20/street-of-dreams-can-we-live-the-martin-luther-king-jr-way/. If your town has a street named after Dr. King, how well does it reflect the values he stood for? If they don't have one and they're going to propose a renaming, which street would do the most to honor his spirit?

#MLK #ReclaimMLK #MLKDay #justice #SocialJustice #transportation #StreetNames #MartinLutherKingJr

Prague Daily News: New “Prague Street Lexicon” offers a comprehensive encyclopaedia of street names in the Czech capital. “Prague has unveiled a new digital reference work on the city’s history. The online database Pražský uličník explains the origin of all street names in the Czech capital – from historic alleys to modern boulevards.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/10/20/prague-daily-news-new-prague-street-lexicon-offers-a-comprehensive-encyclopaedia-of-street-names-in-the-czech-capital/

Hey Madras! Live long and prosper!
💒
In celebration of Madras Day (Aug 22, Chennai's 386th birthday), my essay "Finding Madras in Chennai," published in Counter Arts magazine on @medium

https://medium.com/counterarts/finding-madras-in-chennai-5c9f8855df50?sk=6107d04e395420f5345b515ee9d65e3b

#History #India #Chennai #Madras #madrasday #BritishRaj #streetnames @mastodonindians

Donegal Daily: Letterkenny councillor seeks correction to ‘annoying and dangerous’ map error. “Donegal County Council has been asked to contact Google Maps again to try and fix the incorrect naming of the Old Glencar Road in Letterkenny. The road, which has been named ‘The Grange Road’ on Google Maps for up to a decade, is causing confusion for motorists and a potential danger in the […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/07/12/donegal-daily-letterkenny-councillor-seeks-correction-to-annoying-and-dangerous-map-error/

A Street For Every Date https://hackaday.com/2025/01/08/a-street-for-every-date/ #TransportationHacks #autorouting #streetnames #routing #maps

A Street For Every Date - Different cultures have their own conventions for naming locations, for example in... - https://hackaday.com/2025/01/08/a-street-for-every-date/ #transportationhacks #autorouting #streetnames #routing #maps

Kaimes: the thread linking the “magnificent madness” of a Victorian gun collector to Leith, Corstorphine and Peeblesshire

Kaimes is one of those local place names you just seem to take for granted, without it having any particularly obvious meaning. It comes from the Scots word came or kame, for a comb or crest – describing the landscape feature of a hill or ridge – in turn coming from the Old English Camb. Indeed there is a Kaimes house and Kaimes Hill out by Dalmahoy where the 17th century spelling by mapmaker John Adair is Combs and that by William Roy in the 1750s is Kaims.

The Kaimes in the south of Edinburgh was a small village at the crossroads of the Burdiehouse, Howden Hall, Frogston and Captain’s1 roads (and is also known as Kaimes Crossroads) and has exactly the same meaning, describing two ridges on the rising ground south of the city. William Roy spells this one as Cames and in An Account of the Parish of Liberton in 1792 it is given as “the two Kaims“. The east-west route of Frogston and Captain’s Road was formerly the Kames Road, running from Fairmilehead to the Lasswade Road. By the 19th century the spelling had settled on Kaims – an Ordnance Survey name book of 1852 records it being updated from Cames at that time – and an e was inserted later to give us the modern spelling.

1. Captain’s Road is one of those place names whose meaning has been lost to time, it was only so named in 1900, apparently based on local convention, and is recorded in newspapers in the 1890s. But who the Captain was, nobody troubled to record. ↩︎

You can still find Kaimes Cottage, it’s a quite obvious older interloper in 20th century suburbia of the district. It was, in the 1850s and ’60s, the home of Mr Robert Grieve; a horticulturist noted for his pinks, his pansies and his picotees. His collection of over 1,500 plants was publicly auctioned after his death in 1866.

Kaimes School was opened in 1976 as a purpose-built school for partially sighted children. It is in the grounds of Gracemount High School, where it had been established as a unit in the late 1960s following a recommendation for such a facility as far back as a report in 1950. It could accommodate 100 children of primary and secondary age, from all across Scotland. Particular attention was paid to lighting, a special window coating used to keep out glare from the sun and all rooms being controllable up to a level 3x that of a standard school setting.

There is also a Kaimhead on the Salisbury Crags in the city, with the same OS name books confirming the toponymy:

This name applies to the crest of a low ridge or mound situated a little to the eastward of “Jeanie Deans’ Cottage” in the Queen’s Park. It is derived from the Scottish word “Kaim”, a low ridge, the crest of a hill, and is generally known in the locality

Ordnance Survey Name Book for Midlothian, 1852-53, OS1/11/112/75

And there is of course yet another Kaimes in the city and it’s on a hill too. I speak of course of Kaimes Road in Corstorphine and it’s fiendishly steep as you’ll know if you’ve ever walked or tried to cycle up it.

But this Kaimes isn’t named for the hill it is on, instead it’s named for a distant promontory, Kaimes on the estate of Halmyre, near Romannobridge in Peeblesshire. This is because the land here was owned by and developed for one Charles Ferrier Gordon of Halmyre, an eccentric gun collector, and this connection takes our story on an unexpected tangent.

Gordon also gave his name to the streets in this part of Corstorphine of Gordon Loan and Cairnmuir Road (from Cairnmuir, on the Baddinsgill Estate, also at one time in his ownership). He had also inherited land in Leith via his mother, Magdaline Ferrier, from whom he also took his middle name. This gives us the streets of Halmyre, Gordon and Ferrier (the latter disappeared during cleared in the 1970s). Charles’ grandfather was William Gordon, an illegitimate son of Sir William Gordon of Gordonstoun, 6th bt. Although he could not inherit his father’s title, he inherited money from him and spent this on the Halmyre estate in Peeblesshire in 1808.

The name Halmyre is toponymic, describing a hall (house) on a myre (marshy ground). William built it up into a model Victorian farming and sporting estate, improving and expanding its 16th century mansion house in the fashionable Scottish Baronial Revival style of the day. Charles was the son of William’s sixth son Archibald Gordon, a military doctor, and was born in England. His mother died when he was only 3 weeks old and at this time his father was sent to the Crimea on service, so the baby Charles was sent to the family seat of Halmyre to be raised by an aunt and uncle (Richard Gordon of Halmyre, who had bought the estate when his father William had died). Uncle Richard died in 1865 but a condition of Charles’ inheritance was that he would not come into his majority until he was 31. But his affairs were well managed for him and he was comfortably off, so devoted himself to the life of a country laird at Halmyre, his name appearing in the Peeblesshire papers in the 1880s and 1890s in connection with agricultural shows.

But most of all he indulged in his number one passion in life – guns. Between 1875 and 1904 he is estimated to have amassed a “bewildering succession” of over 300 guns, having most of these custom-built for him by John Dickson & Son of Princes Street in Edinburgh. Each of his guns was said to have “quirks and odd features” and these is something they shared with their master.

Censuses in 1881, 1891 and 1901 record Charles as living at Halmyre with only a housekeeper and a cook (and of course his hundreds of guns). Despite his wealth, such was his appetite for guns that he had to begin feuing off his inherited land to fund his habit – this was the land in Leith and Corstorphine whose street names we have already mentioned. But all was not well with Charles; he was described in contemporary newspapers as being “long of unsound mind” and “incapable of managing his affairs“, indeed his biography is entitled “Magnificent Madness”. He had spent tens of thousands of pounds (millions in 2023) on his gun collection – most of which were never even fired – and amassed substantial debts.

In 1908, adverts in the Scotsman announced the sale of “Sporting Guns and Rifles, Shot Barrels, Powder Flaks, Game Panniers etc. A collection manufactured to the order of Charles Gordon Esq. of Halmyre.” His book collection appeared in the same Edinburgh auction house the following year and three years later, in 1912, his three half-sisters by his father’s second marriage – Alice, Magdalene and Isabella Gordon – sold the estate of Halmyre by public roup (auction) for £12,000. Isabella moved into Halmyre House itself. They were acting curator bonis – in Scots law this means “a legal representative appointed by a court to manage the finances, property, or estate of another person unable to do so because of mental or physical incapacity“.

In 1911, aged 57, he was living alone at Logan Cottage in West Linton with only a single servant for company. His half-sisters did not include the cottage of Kaimhouse, which lends its name to the street in Corstorphine, on the estate in the sale, and this is where he lived out his final days. Charles Ferrier Gordon died there in 1918 aged 64; the summary of his biography says he was “a man who bankrupted his estate ending his days alone with all his possessions sold, insane and incapable of running his affairs.” But he did not find peace in death, within months the Misses Gordon, his curator bonis, went to court to challenge his will. This document had been hand-written and signed by Charles in 1908, leaving what remained of his estate to one Eleanora Gordon-Cumming (who was no direct relation), also known as Eleanora Nakesaka. Despite him blowing most of his wealth on his gun obsession, at the time of his death he still left behind, after debts and expenses, the not insignificant amount of £5,924 11s 1d (c. £252k in 2023), which clearly Eleanora felt was worth pursuing a claim on.

The Misses Gordon contested that “he was throughout his life, of unsound mind, and on account of his mental state incapable of managing his affairs or giving proper directions to their management“. Charles had become acquainted with Eleanora prior to 1907, and for a period in 1912 had lived with her and her husband in Edinburgh. Eleanora was represented in court by her husband, a language teacher, and pleaded that the will was “genuine, clear and deliberate expression of [his] wishes“, the Misses Gordon – represented by Mr Wilson KC – maintained that Charles “was incapable of understanding the importance and effect of the will” and therefore it could not be so. It took the court and jury just a day to find against Eleanora and in favour of the Misses Gordon.

That might have been that, but Eleanora and her husband, Michel Naake Nakeski, were serial litigants and would not let their loss lie. They had been bankrupted in September 1923, and in November that year a strange case came up in the Court of Session whereby he attempted to sue the lawyer representing the estate of Charles Ferrier Gordon – J. Harold Macdonald WS – for the sum of £960 (about £48k in 2023). Michel ‘s case made 3 different claims:

1. £215 for the price of three pictures, a pair of pistols and a blunderbuss that he had sold to Gordon in 1908 and never been paid for
2. £134 for board, wine and cash advances made to Gordon between 1908 and 1912
3. £120 for secretarial work he claimed to have undertaken for Gordon in 1912

The balance of the claim was 11 years interest. The judge, Lord Morison, found that Nakeski had produced no actual evidence besides his own “vague and unsatisfactory” testimony, and “gave no intelligible account” of his alleged transactions. He threw the claim out and no expenses were found against him on the condition that he did not proceed with further such litigation. Instead, Michel found a new spurious claim to try and in December that year he sued the War Compensation Court for £1,500 (£75k in 2023) on account of a military order that stipulated he “could not reside without permission in certain areas” during the war on account of his Polish birth which had therefore limited his earning potential as an itinerant tutor of languages. Once again, the case was thrown out. The John Bull magazine describer Eleanora in 1924 as an “inveterate, cadging mendicant“. The couple never had much luck in court; Michel had been fined £15 in 1919 by the Sheriff Court for failing to provide himself an identity book “as required by the Aliens Restriction (Consolidation) Order, 1916“, for her part Eleanora was fined £2 2s. She appealed the fine, lost, and found it increased to £9 11s for her pains.

You can read an article from Shooting Sportsman about Charles Ferrier Gordon and his gun collection, here.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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Mannheim Quadratestadt in Mannheim, Germany

In this German city center, the streets have no names.#maps #cities #streetnames #urbanplanning #geographicoddities #geographicmarkers #section-Atlas
Mannheim Quadratestadt

Around Craigentinny: the thread about Scots, English, Gaelic, Dutch, Cornish and Irish origins of suburban streetnames

I recently wrote a thread about the meanings of the street names on the old Easter Duddingston estate, and how nearly all are linked to the Abercorn family. So now it is the time to boldly stray north of Moira Terrace and the Portobello Road to see what lies on the other side and where its street names come from (spoiler: it’s Craigentinny, and once again they come almost entirely from one family!)

By Craigentinny I mean the area defined by the old estate on that name, which was itself the eastern portion of the older Barony of Restalrig. The origins of Craigentinny are somewhat obscure but the most frequently told version says it was land acquired by one James Nisbet1 from the Logans of Restalrig in 1604. Here he built a tower house (or improved an existing one) which for reasons known to himself Christened Craigentinny. The roots of that name are Gaelic but the precise meaning is lost to time, the usual explanation is Creag an t’Sionnaich or Fox Rock. You can read a bit more on the origins and history of the house over at Stravaiging Around Scotland.

After 160 years in hands of various Nisbets the house and estate was bought in 1762 by William Miller (1722-1799), a wealthy Quaker seed merchant from the Canongate who was known locally as “King of the Quakers“. He had a single surviving son late in life by his third wife, his heir William Henry Miller. William Henry inherited on his father’s death in 1799.

1. James Nisbet (1557-1621), son of Henry Nisbet of Dean, established the Nisbet of Craigentinny line.
   He was followed by his son Sir Henry Nisbet (1584-1667), who was followed by his 4th son Sir Patrick Nisbet (1623-1682). Patrick exchanged titles with his cousin – Sir Alexander Nisbet of Dean – in 1672 with the latter becoming Sir Alexander Nisbet of Craigentinny (1630-1682). He was succeeded by his second son, Capt. Alexander Nisbet (1688-1735), his eldest son Sir William having succeeded instead to the Nisbet of Dirleton line. The former did not have a male heir, so Craigentinny passed via Alexander’s sister – Christian Nisbet (1692-1738) – to his nephew John Scott (1729-1764), the oldest grandson of Sir Alexander Nisbet. John took the double-barrelled surname Scott-Nisbet to inherit the title and sold Craigentinny to William Miller the Quaker in 1762, whose father already possessed Fillyside Farm on the estate. ↩︎

The image below shows the 1847 estate boundary, which was altered slightly when the North British Railway came through this district to make sure there were no isolated parts of Craigentinny or Duddingston on the respectively wrong side of the tracks.

William Henry Miller became MP for Newcastle-Under-Lyme in 1830, spending most of his time on an estate he purchased in England, where he set about amassing one of the most important book collections of its time. It is he who is buried far beneath the magnificent Craigentinny Marbles mausoleum on his Edinburgh estate, which you will find sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the 1930s bungalows of Craigentinny Crescent.

When William Henry Miller died in 1848 he was unmarried and without heir (there are baseless antiquarian rumours that he may have been variously a Roman Catholic, adopted, a woman or even intersex, but those are beside the point here). His will disbarred his closest relations from inheriting and the estate was instead bequeathed to his “nieces” or “cousins”, Sarah and Ellen Marsh, who continued to lived at Britwell and Craigentinny. There is an unsolved mystery as to the precise relation of the Marsh sisters to Miller; they certainly weren’t direct relations and may instead have been close companions of his Mother. The sisters had to defend the will in court – there were years of legal wrangling and competing claims by other Miller relative – before they could inherit. When they did, the Lord Lyon granted them the use of the Miller title and arms.

On the death of the surviving sister, Ellen, the estate was inherited by a distant cousin of the Millers, Samuel Christy. He was an English hatter from the well known firm Christy & Co. and also a Quaker. As part of his inheritance Samuel formally changed his surname to Christy-Miller. This was was soon changed to the Scottish form of Christie-Miller (the Christys were, after all, descendants of an Aberdeen Christie).

Note that some sources will tell you that William Henry Miller was also known as Christiemiller; that’s patently not true. He died in 1848, and Samuel Christy didn’t fully inherit and change his name until fourteen years after his death in 1862! To confuse matters further, Samuel also had an unrelated uncle called William Miller Christy! It was this establishment of the new family name of Christie-Miller that gives us our first street name on this local history tour – Christiemiller Avenue (and later Place and Grove), which was developed from 1931 onwards.

Samuel Christie-Miller was predeceased by his only son so Craigentinny passed to his nephew Wakefield Christy in 1889, who thus became Wakefield Christie-Miller and gives his name to Wakefield Avenue. (Wakefield being his mother’s maiden name.)

At the other end of the bungalow belt from Wakefield Avenue is Britwell Crescent. Britwell is a medieval Cambridgeshire name (from Bright Well) and it was where William Henry Miller had bought the estate and house of Britwell Place as his southern residence on becoming an MP in 1830. It was here where Miller built a library for his book collection in a purpose-built, fireproof wing. This property passed via the Marsh sisters to the Christie-Millers and is now known as Grenville Court.

Moving east through Craigentinny again, we come to Sydney Terrace, Place and Park. These are named for Sydney Richardson Christie-Miller, who inherited the estate in 1898 on the death of his father Wakefield.

Bordering these last streets are Vandeleur Avenue, Grove and Place, which are named for Evelyn Vandeleur, wife of Sydney. She was of the Anglo-Irish gentry but Vandeleur is an old Dutch and Flemish name – Van de Laer or Vanderloo means one who lives in a grove. There have been Vandeleurs in Kilrush, Co. Clare, since Oliver Cromwell’s time. That Dutch / Flemish connection is highly unusual in Edinburgh place names (it may be unique!) and I think we can say the same of the next street along, Kekewich Avenue, which is Cornish! The connection here is that the Christie-Miller family lawyer when this street was formed was one C. Granville Kekewich, esq.

Up from Kekewich is the solidly Scottish Bryce Avenue and Grove. Andrew Bryce of Southside Bank Farm was the estate factor for the Christie-Millers. His Victorian farmhouse still exists, hiding in plain site between Vandeleur and Kekewich Avenues off the Portobello Road.

Off of Bryce is Goff Avenue. Goff is from the Anglo-Irish wing of the Christie-Miller family again, from the English Goffe or Gough – Wakefield Christie-Miller’s youngest son was Edward Goff Christie-Miller. The Goff branch descended from Major General William Goffe, or William the Regicide, a parliamentarian army officer and Cromwell loyalist who had put his seal and signature on the death warrant of King Charles I. This connection again may be unique in Edinburgh street names.

In the northern sector of the Craigentinny Bungalowopolis we find Nantwich Drive and Stapeley Avenue. Both are Cheshire placenames: Stapheley House in Nantwich was bought by the Christie-Millers in 1910 and Geoffrey Christie-Miller settled there. It was turned over to a war hospital in 1914-18. Geoffrey, another of Wakefield’s sons, was a decorated war hero in that conflict with the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. He and his wife honeymooned at Craigentinny House in 1908 and he took an active interest in the running of the Craigentinny estate and family hat business

The last 2 streets with Christie-Miller connections lie to the south of Moira Terrace: Parker Road / Avenue / Terrace and Farrer Terrace and Grove. Christopher Parker and Helen Farrer were parents-in-law to Sydney Christie-Miller’s brother Charles and were godparents to a number of his children.

All of these streets are part of the bungalow belt sprawl (although there are some earlier Edwardian villa flats) dating from around 1934 and on the lands of the Southside Bank and Fillyside Bank farms. But the estate had a third farm in addition to these, that of Wheatfield. The Georgian farmhouse of Wheatfield is another of those “oh, I didn’t realise I’d been looking at it the whole time” buildings, it’s just down from the Marbles, set back far enough from Moira Terrace behind a tall, gateless wall to be quite unobtrusive and it does not lend its name to any streets.

Much of the lands of the farm of Wheatfield were purchased by the Corporation of Edinburgh in 1932, along with Craigentinny House and its gardens, the old Piershill Barracks and Piersfield portion of the Parson’s Green Estate for council housing and a new school. These streets were given Loganlea and Loaning names. The former comes from Loganes Ley, a field elsewhere on the old Logan Restalrig barony where the wappenschaw took place: the muster and demonstration of men and their weaponry who were obliged to perform military service for the town or laird. The latter street names come from loaning, a generic and common old Scots placename; a loan being a lane, and a loaning implying a public right of way along it. This refers to the old route across the Craigentinny Meadows, which began at the gates of Craigentinny House.

The Craigetinny Loaning lead across those “Irrigated Meadows” to the farm of Fillyside Bank. Most of the land of this farm was not built upon for housing, it instead was developed to form the Craigentinny Golf Course, with portions containing a Corporation refuse depot and sewage pumping station and the Meadows Yard railway sidings.

But there was some bungalow building on the farmland, inclduing the streets of Fillyside Road, Terrace and Avenue. Fillysydebank, also known as Greenbank, is first mentioned in 1553. It was also at times the East Mains and North Mains of Restalrig. Filly- comes from the Scots Falu-, a topographical descriptor for “yellowish” land. There is yet another old house hiding in plain site nearby, off Seafield Street, that takes the name Fillyside. However it took this purely as a loan when it was built in 1810 and was never on the Nisbet / Miller / Christie-Miller Craigentinny estate land, but just over the boundary from it.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Jamaica Streets: the thread about how Edinburgh and Leith street names evidence the time of colonialism and slavery

This thread was originally written and published in July 2023.

There are an unusual number of Jamaica Streets in Scotland: there are (or were) streets of this name in Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness, Glasgow, Greenock, Peterhead and Edinburgh. Street names can tell us many things from the people, events and places that they commemorate. Set in stone or metal signs, they can give us insights into the past. In the case of Jamaica Street, this is a direct link to colonialism in the West Indies and, by extension, slavery. In fact Edinburgh has not just had one Jamaica Street, it has had at least five.

The best known Jamaica Street in Edinburgh is that which was in the Northern New Town, built from around 1805 onwards, marked by the red dot in the map above. It was not amongst the New Town’s most splendid streets or highest quality residences and by the 1950s had been classed as a slum, with demolition following after an order of 1964. The surrounding mews lanes of Jamaica Street North Lane and –South Lane were retained, and in 1981 a new development of courtyard flats called Jamaica Mews was completed in the vacant plot for Link Housing Association. Stubs of the original street remain at the east and west sides as access to the lanes.

But this was not the first Jamaica Street in Edinburgh, that honour goes to a relatively short-lived route through the Southside of the Old Town (yellow dot on the map at the top of this page. This existed prior to the opening of the South Bridge and is shown on maps in the 1780s. Running along the axis of Infirmary Street and North College Street (now Chambers Street), this name never appears to have caught on and by a 1784 town plan was not in use.

A third Jamaica street also existed in the first quarter of the 19th century, forming the foot of what is now known as Morrison Street (orange dot on the map at the top of this page). This land was owned by a William Morrison esq., who lived in the house of Rosemount shown on the below map just below the “J” of “Jamaica”. The streets here were a speculative development on his part. Development of this street was extremely slow, with only a handful of houses completed by the time of the 1849 Ordnance Survey town plan, by which time the name Morrison Street is in use.

A further example could be found in Edinburgh’s port town of Leith. In 1809, a new street was planned along the Ferry Road in North Leith, part of which took the name Jamaica Street (the green dot on the map at the top of this page).

This name was suppressed after the 1850s, however if you are eagle eyed, and look (the best vantage position is the top deck of a bus) on the oldest block of this street – above 142A Ferry Road – you can still spot the original name inscribed in the masonry.

But during the late 18th and early 19th century Leith was formed of two distinct and independent parishes of which North Leith was only one. In the other, South Leith, a further Jamaica Street existed for a period. This one does not show up on maps, and as far as I can tell has been overlooked by the two principal references on Edinburgh Street names (Stuart Harris and Charles Boog-Watson) but is referred to in a number of adverts for the rouping (sale by auction) of land. This street was probably not developed before it was renamed to the present day Duke Street around 1818 (darker blue dot on the map at the top of this page).

There are further connections to Caribbean islands in the street names of Georgian Edinburgh. After around 1790, an upper section of Morrison Street adjacent to the then Jamaica Street was known as Tobago Street, and just off it was a property known as Tobago Place (pink dot on the map at the top of this page). The landowner here at this time was one “Mr Nathaniel Davidson of the Isle of Tobago”.

Stuart Harris – the late authority on Edinburgh and district place names – said that the the theory what is now Bridge Street Lane in Portobello was once another Tobago Street was one where “evidence is lacking“, how there is more than one mention of a street of this name in Portobello in the 1850s.

And around 1804, one of the many “places” along Leith Walk was named Antigua Street (the light blue dot on the map at the top of this page), a name it keeps to this day (although there was a concerted plan by the Corporation to rename it as part of Leith Walk or Leith Street in 1935).

Of course these are just streets named directly after colonies and by attachment, slavery in the Caribbean (you can read some of these links for Edinburgh on this blog). There are of course myriad other connections in street names, where they are named after individuals who owned slaves, colonial land or plantations; after their investors; after colonial administrators; and other parts of the British Empire, such as India Street and the now demolished India Place in the Northern New Town (white dots on the map at the top of this page). There is much more work to be done than this simple scratch of the surface by flicking through a few books on place names in order to identify deeper and less obvious links to the past.

Footnote. There is one set of “colonial” names though that do not actually have any colonial links, these are the Colonies houses, of Stockbridge, Abbeyhill, Restalrig Road, North Leith etc. The name may either refer to them being communities outwith the then city boundary (so thought of as a distinct colony of workers) or due to their builder – the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company – using the beehive – a symbol of worker cooperation – as an identity.

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Indian Peter’s Penny Post: the thread about Edinburgh first local postal service, house numbers and street directories

This thread is a write-up of a talk given for the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust in June 2023. It has been split across multiple sections for ease of reading.

This vacance is a heavy doom
On Indian Peter’s Coffee Room,
For a’ his china pigs are toom;
Nor do we see
In wine the sicker bisket’s soom
As light’s a flee.

The Rising of the Session, Robert Fergusson

In this verse, the “lights” that Robert Fergusson refers to are the men of law of the Court of Session in 18th century Edinburgh, fleeing the city in the summer to their country houses, away from the stench of the Old Town. Indian Peter’s Coffee Room was a small establishment within the Parliament Hall itself, the outer house of the Court of Session, Scotland’s supreme civil court, it’s patrons being the men of the law who conducted their business there. The “china pigs” are the drinks vessels and are empty now the customers are gone, and the “sicker biskets soom” is the dipping of small, sweet biscuits into the wine.

Part 1. Indian Peter.

So who was “Indian Peter”? Before we can go any further in our story it is very important to understand some of his long and complex life history, as it is relevant to his character and his motivations in later life. Indian Peter was Peter Williamson, born 1730 in Aberdeenshire. He was the son of a farmer and as a boy was sent to live with an aunt in Aberdeen. Aged 13, while hanging around the quayside in that city, he was tricked aboard a ship under false pretences and imprisoned. Not long thereafter he was part of a cargo of 70 abducted boys and girls who were taken to North America on board the ship Planter to be sold as a slave labour. On arrival in the New World, the vessel was shipwrecked, and the children were abandoned to their fate. When it was clear that they had survived, their captors returned and took them for sale. Peter was sold for £16 to a Scots settler who had arrived in America by the same method he had. He was as fortunate as his circumstances could allow him and his new master treated him well and schooled him.

The master died when Peter was aged 17, leaving him his horse, saddle and £120. With little reason to return to Scotland, Williamson settled down to farm and marry. His wife’s family were planters of some means and he was given a good property to work by his father-in-law. His recent good fortune however took a turn for the worse in 1754 when the farm was raided and burnt to the ground by the native Lenape people: the Delaware Indians. His wife was absent at the time but Peter was taken captive and forced to carry off his best possessions as booty. He spent some time as a captive with the Delaware, acting as a porter. During this experience he claimed to have been tortured and to have seen other settlers tortured or killed, but also picked up some of their customs (which he would later adopt and which would personify him in Edinburgh).

After 4 months of captivity, Williamson seized a night time opportunity and escaped under the cover of the noise and activity of wild hogs and managed to return to the planter community. Tragically he found that his wife had died two months previously. Motivated by loss or revenge, he joined a British regiment in the Seven Years War to fight against the French and their Indian allies, serving for 18 months before being captured and imprisoned for the third time in his life in 1756 at the Battle of Oswego.

Wounded, he was sent to a camp in Quebec he was soon fortunate to be repatriated to Britain in a prisoner exchange and that same year landed a broken man in Plymouth. Paid off from the army due to injury with a paltry sum, he headed for “home” in Aberdeen but ran out of his funds in York. It was here he ingratiated himself with some gentlemen who published an account of his life’s adventure in a book called “French and Indian Cruelty”. The book was a success and with the money he made from it he was able to return to Aberdeen, intending to sell his book and settle down. However the Aberdeen magistrates, who he had accused of being complicit in his abduction as a boy (and that of hundreds of other children) had other ideas and had him arrested and his books impounded. To secure his release, he had to agree to sign a retraction of his story and accusations, to pay a fine of 10 shillings, and to have his books publicly burned by the town executioner.

Spurned by his home town, he headed south to Edinburgh where he ingratiated himself amongst some men of the law. Appalled by his tale, they agreed to help him sue the Magistrates of Aberdeen. Williamson was able to build up a convincing legal case, supported by many witnesses, and surprised everyone by winning. He was awarded £100 in damages and his expenses. The magistrates, represented by one Walter Scott (the father of Sir Walter Scott) appealed, and lost. Settling in Edinburgh with his award, he re-published his book and set himself up as a tavern keeper on the Parliament Square. A sign over the door of his establishment reputedly read “PETER WILLIAMSON, VINTNER FROM THE OTHER WORLD“. When business was slow, he would don the guise of a Delaware Indian which he had managed to procure and perform a “war dance” in the High Street. Thus he became an accepted eccentric in the city’s social scene as “Indian Peter“, “Peter Williamson of the Mohawk Nation” and the “King of the Indians“.

He moved his business into the Parliament Hall as a coffee house, with the men of the law being his primary clientèle. He was also popular amongst the literary men and as well as Fergusson his shop was patronised by James Boswell and Sir Walter Scott and he was a correspondent with Ben Franklin.

Indian Peter was not content to just live the life of a coffee house keeper and local celebrity however, and showed an irrepressible entrepreneurial streak. During a visit to London, he bought a portable printing press, which he returned to Edinburgh. Unable to break the closed ranks of the city’s printers for training, he instead taught himself how to operate it and went into business as a printer, publisher and book seller. At times he also ran a small bank (offering to exchange bank notes for “ready money, books or coffee” and even ran a lottery offering two squirrels as the prize!

The name “Ready Money Bank” was a jibe aimed at some of the Scottish banks, which at this time issued “option clause” notes, where your note, when presented for redemption, was at risk of being paid out not in cash but for a note of another bank.

But it was in 1773 where Williamson’s two greatest contributions to the City are made; he establishes a Penny Post (only the second such service in the British Isles) and he began compiling and publishing street directories of the city and its principal residents. It is now that our story really begins. So why are these innovations of his so important? Firstly, they allowed anyone to send communications within the city, quickly, reliably and (relatively) cheaply and they told you to whom to send it and where! It is the beginning of a modern communication network within the city, a city which was just beginning to break free of the ancient confines of the Old Town and across the Nor’ Loch valley to the opportunities, space and clear air of the New Town. The Postal Museum states “in particular, the Edinburgh Penny Post [was] influential in establishing the pattern for the Provincial English Penny Posts that followed.“

Part 2. The Edinburgh Penny Post

Before the advent of the Edinburgh Penny Post, messages were carried around the city by your own servants or you could hire a Caddie (the town’s licensed class of porters and messengers) or pay a trustworthy child to run the errand. It was also the job of the Caddie to know everyone and everything, they acted as an informal news, communications and intelligence network.

The first Penny Post was established in London by William Dockwra in 1680, but he quickly fell foul of the General Post Office (GPO) monopoly and the fact his service was thought to be carrying seditious letters, it was seized from him, his patent forfeit and was ordered to pay £2,000 compensation. But you can’t keep a good idea down, and in 1765 an act was passed (Postage Act 1765) permitting licensed Penny Posts in provincial towns and cities. Although Williamson established his post in 1773, it was not until 1776 that he was formally granted permission from the Postmaster General for his service. His network in the city operated from 9AM to 9PM each day and for an English penny (paid up front, or on delivery) you could send a letter or small packet within one English mile of the Mercat Cross, north, south, east or west, and to Leith. The service to the latter, the city’s port, operated 8 times a day in both directions, between 8AM and 7PM.

Four postmen were employed, who carried a hand bell to advertise their presence and wore a service cap with the name “Williamson’s Penny Post” painted or embroidered on it in silver and who were paid 4 shilling and 6 pence per week. The story goes that the caps were numbered 1, 4, 8 and 16 to make it appear as if the business was 4 times bigger than it really was. Knowing Williamson’s inventive abilities for self promotion, this does not seem that far fetched to be true. Of only one of the postmen do we have any sort of an insight, a highlander by the name of Donald Mackintosh who hailed from the vicinity of from near Blair Atholl and Killiecrankie. Mackintosh would have been in his thirties at this time and his task was described as a “his “useful though humble vocation”. He would later rise to prominence in his own right as an Episcopalian clergyman and a scholar of Scottish Gaelic.

It was not only the four postmen who collected letters, they could also be dropped off at a network of 18 “receiving houses” in the city and Leith, which were pre-existing shops that Williamson had convinced to act as post offices. His carriers would call at them on their rounds to collect any deposited letters for onward delivery. He listed these in the directory, making it relatively easy to plot them to a map. At this stage the New Town could be served by a single receiving house on St. Andrew Street, the Canongate and southern suburbs both each by a single house too. The 1775 directory had a slightly refined network, with the concentration in the centre of the High Street reduced, additional houses in each of the Canongate and Southside and an additional house in Leith.

Much of the business for the Penny Post came from the men of the law that Williamson was already ingratiated with – reflected in the concentration of receiving houses around the Parliament Square – as it was they who had a business need to communicate quickly and frequently across the city. They knew him well: he was both in their fold but an outsider in the city hierarchy; he had long overheard their intimate business discussions in his tavern and coffee house without making a nuisance of himself. He was therefore a man to be trusted with their secrets.

But it was not just the city’s lawyers and merchants who found use for the Penny Post. It offered an important new opportunity to women, as for the first time they could begin to converse privately through writing, away from the prying eyes of the servants who up until that time would have been entrusted with carrying letters. One exceptional romance is recorded as taking place discretely though Williamson’s delivery network; that of Robert Burns and Agnes Maclehose, known either as his Nancy, or Clarinda. In all, this flourishing written courtship amounted to 88 letters, carried by the Penny Post, and what Sir Walter Scott described as “the most extraordinary mixture of sense and nonsense, and of love human and divine, that was ever exposed to the eye of the world“. Burns, bedridden at the time after injuring his leg, was lodgning near the St. Andrew Street receiving house in the New Town and Nancy was but a short distance from the branch on Chapel Street, just beyond the Potterrow. On some days the couple would exchange as many as two letters each, in both directions.

Even at this early stage, in a relatively small city, the correct addressing of mail was an issue for the Penny Post and Williamson had to print begging notices in his directories pleading for letters to be clearly and non-ambiguously addressed.

One of Williamson’s receiving houses was the premises of John Wilson, a bookseller who had one of the shops in the colonnade in front of the Royal Exchange (now the City Chambers). Wilson also sold Williamson’s directories and happened to be his father-in-law. He is absent from the later versions of the list of Receiving Houses. This is with good reason; Williamson had separated for his wife – Jean Wilson – having accused her both of serial adultery and also of interfering with the Penny Post and misappropriating its profits. She had also cut him off from access to his children, including the eldest daughter who made a reasonable addition to the family income as a mantua maker (specialising in making ladies’ mantles) and with her father had set up a rival operation to try and run Peter out of business! But if the story so far has taught us anything, it is that when he was down, Peter Williamson was never out, and he would come back fighting. Once more he turned to his friends in the legal establishment and he built up an indestructible case against his wife. He cited nineteen different servants, doctors and lawyers as witnesses; she put up none in defence. She tried to get Williamson to pay for her legal defence, the court found that she had left him in forma pauperis (in the manner of a pauper; unable to pay) which further damaged her reputation. Williamson was granted divorce in his favour in March 1789 and regained control of his businesses and custody of his children. To recoup his losses from this case, he published a sensational account of his wife’s “crimes” against him, which having been proven in court he had no need to worry about being sued over.

In all, Williamson would run his Penny Post successfully for 19 years, it returning him on average a profit of £50 per annum (about £6,500 in 2023). However the reality was that he was ageing, and his energy for self promotion, fighting off the competition and keeping his postmen in check was waning. In 1790 Francis Freeling, the secretary to the Postmaster General, visited Edinburgh and observed the Penny Post in action. Suitably impressed, on his return to London he recommended to his superior that the GPO should take the service over and run it for itself. A younger Williamson may have tried to resist, but he sensibly acquiesced to authority and in 1793 the GPO took over the service. But true to form, he did not hand it over before overstating both his age and his financial dependence on the Post in a letter to the Postmaster General, ensuring he received a pension of £25 for life in return for relinquishing control.

We have also to beg your Lordships permission to authorise us to allow Mr. Williamson of Edinburgh £25 per annum, he having long had the profits of 1d. a letter on certain letters forwarded through his receiving house in Edinburgh, which he will lose by our having established a penny post there.

Passage from a letter from the Postmaster General to the Treasury, requesting Williamson’s pension, 17th July 1793

The GPO quickly adapted the service to their own practices, cutting down both the number of receiving houses – from 18 to 9, the number of collections to 5 per day and the number of deliveries to 3; but at relatively fixed times of morning 98AM), early evening and late evening (7PM). They increased the number of postmen to 20 and by 1817 there were 30.

Part 3. Williamson’s Postal Directories

Williamson’s other great innovation in 1773-74 was the collation and publication of a postal directory for the city. (You can view this directory for yourself here, on the website of the National Library of Scotland.) He described it himself thusly:

An alphabetical list of the names and places of abode of the members of the college of justice; public and private gentlemen; merchants, and other eminent traders;  mechanics and all persons in public business; where at one view you have a plain Direction, pointing out the Streets, Wynds, Closes, Lands and other Places of their Residence, in and about this Metropolis. Together with Separate Lists of the Magistrates, Court of Session and Court of Exchequer, the Constables of Edinburgh, Canongate and Leith, Carriers, etc.

Descriptive preface to Williamson’s first postal directory

This was the first comprehensive directory of anyone who was anyone in the city, what they did and where they were based. Williamson also includes useful information such as the boundaries of parishes, the members of the town council, the constables, and lists of carriers, the days they depart and where they operated from and to, and of course a list of his own Penny Post receiving houses. He operated this as a vertically-integrated business; he gathered the contents, published and printed it on his own presses, used it to advertise his Penny Post system and sold it himself at his own bookshop.

To produce the publication, Williamson claimed to have visited every address in the city to compile details of the occupants and their professions. Many were suspicious of his motives and would not consent to give their details, which resulted in an incomplete listing that has a large appendix of late additions, which made it hard to use. A unique and cumbersome feature of the first directory was that within each letter of the alphabet, he sub-organised the contents by profession. While this makes it harder to find what you are looking for, it is a fascinating insight into the rigid social and professional hierarchies of the city at this time and perhaps the relative esteem with which Williamson himself held each class of profession. In all, the directory lists 3,914 individuals and 130 different occupations, some of which I have grouped together for convenience (e.g. shoemakers and clogmakers; barbers, wigmakers and hairdressers). The table below ranks professions with the the highest 15 and lowest 15 positions in the directory in the 1773-74 directory.

The contents of this directory also allow us to easily total up the relative frequency of the different occupations amongst the entries and plot them as a chart (below). From this we can observe that a full quarter of the entries are for the Incorporated Trades (i.e. the officially recognised and established trade and craft associations of the city, such as bakers, butchers, goldsmiths, taylors, weavers etc.). A further fifth are the men of the law, and a tenth are the merchants. This is fully unsurprising for a city built upon the prosperity and power of these groups. We can see that the nobility, by volume, are a relatively small component, and while print, medicine and education are relatively small contributions, these are three industries that will flourish in Edinburgh in the next 100 years and that the city will become synonymous with.

There are no street numbers in any of Williamson’s Directories until 1784. Prior to this, locations are simple, relatively vague and purely descriptive such as “head of Baillie Fyfe’s Close” or “Grassmarket, south side“. The introduction of numbers at first was just for the New Town and small parts of the Southside of the city (Nicolson Street and Chapel Street), the exception being James’ Court, which at the time was an exclusive address.

Although he originally intended to produce only a single directory, in the end they were such a success that Williamson published them for 17 years. For his final directory, that for a two year period of 1790-92, he subcontracted the printing out to Campbell Denovan, but retained the rights to sell a certain volume of copies exclusively. From 1794 the Edinburgh directories would be published by Thomas Aitchison, and then again the Denovans in 1804 before the Post Office itself took over in 1805 (although the printing was still local in Edinburgh). These later directories conform very closely to the style and structure first set out by Williamson, a testament to his ability to bring a systematic and ordered approach to what was a very chaotic city.

Williamson exercised this latter talent in what is a remarkable document, known either as “Williamson’s Broadside” or “An Accurate View of All the Streets, Wynds, Squares, and Closes of the City of Edinburgh, Suburbs, and Canongate, on both sides of the High-street, from the Castle to Holyrood-house, agreeable to the names they are at present known by, together with those in the New Town and Leith.”. This large printed page was a comprehensive list of all the closes and streets of the city and Leith, and their relative order and position to each other and the principal landmarks. An invaluable reference then, it is even more so now for modern eyes interested in where the old streets and closes were located and what names were in use. Ever the man with an eye on business, the corners of the page advertise other products and services sold by Williamson such as his Penny Post, stamps for marking books and linen, printed funeral announcement cards, and a form of fortune-telling cards he printed.

You can view the full broadside for yourself in a chapter that starts on Page 261 of volume 22 (original series) of the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, published in 1939, which is digitised online here.

With his Penny Posts in the hands of the GPO and his directories with Campbell Denovan, Peter Williamson retired with his pension and what was left of his profits from these businesses (he claimed his wife and father-in-law had robbed him of fully three quarters of the latter) and took up a tavern in the Lawnmarket. He died in January 1799, and was buried in “The full panoply of a Delaware chief” in the grave of Mr. J. Scott, some distance north-east of William Nicol, beneath a stone surmounted by an urn.

Part 4. Street Numbering and Re-Numbering

Street numbering in Edinburgh started in the early 1780s, Williamson’s directories first reflecting it in 1784. It progressed as the New Town itself expanded, and the practice slowly began to spread to other parts of the city. Streets with only one side were simply numbered in a series from one upwards. However at this time there was no agreed manner by which to number doors in streets with two sides (which was most of them!) Three principal methods existed and all were implemented and existed side-by-side with no consistent approach – indeed the New Town used all three!

• The first method used is that with which we are familiar today: one side of a street has even numbers and the other has odd numbers, and the numbers increase in series as you move along the street.
• The second method was a “there and back again” method, whereby numbering progressed in an increasing series of odd and even numbers from number 1, up one side of the street, to the end, and then back down the other side. This meant that the highest and lowest numbers of the street were opposite each other. Nicolson Street was one street that used this method of numbering.

• The third method was that of “northside / southside”. In this system, the street sides were named north and south (or east and west) and each side was numbered from 1 upwards in a continuous series. As a result, each number was duplicated, No. 1 North Side and No. 1 South Side were opposite each other, and without specifying which side of the street a letter was intended for or an advert was referring to one could easily end up with the wrong door.

By 1811 the system (if you could call it that) was in chaos, as not only was there no consistent methodology but demolitions, new buildings and subdivisions had caused numbering sequences to become haphazard and out of sequence. Something had to be done, and done it was. Despite a curious lack of historical record in either the City Archives or contemporary newspapers, on Whitsunday 1811 there was a wholesale and systematic renumbering of much of the City which had been numbered up to that point. The Caledonian Mercury contains one of the few examples evidencing this wholesale change:

The new numbering system split the city into quadrants, using the east-west axis of the High Street and the north-south axis of the Bridges and St. Andrew Street (shown as the yellow line on the map below). Within each of these quadrants, streets with two sides would be numbered with odd doors on one side and evens on the other, and the number series would increase as you moved away from the axis (shown by the blue lines on the map below) – so in theory the numbers always increase as you move away from the centre point of the quadrants. The system placed the odd numbered doors on your right and the even numbered doors on your left as you walked along any street in the direction of increasing numbers.

There were of course exceptions to the system. The Grassmarket ran in the “wrong” direction, retaining its former door numbering order which increased towards the axis. The Cowgate passes underneath the South Bridge axis, so one half of it (the western end) was inevitably not going to be able to conform. The east west axis – the “Royal Mile” of the Canongate, High Street, Lawn Market and Castle Hill – was numbered in two sequences. The first was the Canongate, uphill from the palace of Holyroodhouse to old burgh boundary with Edinburgh at the Netherbow. The High Street, Lawnmarket and Castle Hill were numbered into one continuous uphill sequence from the Netherbow. It is for this reason that to this day, the Lawnmarket street numbers start at 300 (evens) and 435 (odds), and there are no numbers 2 to 298 or 1 to 433 Lawnmarket. Similarly the numbering on the Castlehill starts at 348 (evens) and 525 (odds). Other oddities include Great King Street, where the evens are on your right instead of the odds, and South Bridge, which retained the old “there and back again” numbering and still does to this day (this is despite the North Bridge and Nicolson Street, its northern and southern extensions, being re-numbered)

The First New Town of Edinburgh, that part planned out by James Craig and that existed prior to 1811, conforms almost perfectly to the rules of the 1811 numbering system. On the map below, the red arrows show the street numbers ascend in the correct directions. The squares of Charlotte and St. Andrew are ordered in a clockwise manner. The Northern or Second New Town, the section north of Queen Street Gardens was developed from 1800 onwards so conformed to the scheme too (with the exception of the already noted Great King Street). The “Moray Feu” extension of the New Town, shown in the blue arrows, was developed from 1822 and conformed with the 1811 scheme, with the anomaly of Great Stuart Street, which is interrupted by Ainslie Place, so you have to pass through the latter to get to the other side of the former.

The West End (green arrows on the map above) was feud from the estate of Walker of Coates from 1813 onwards and took its own, haphazard approach as it developed in a piecemeal manner. Queensferry Street is numbered in a “there and back again” nature; the numbers on some streets ascend in the right direction, but with the odds and evens on the wrong sides; Drumsheugh Gardens increases in an anti-clockwise manner, and towards the Dean Bridge; the street is Lynedoch Place on one side and Randolph Cliff on the other, each with its own numbering sequence. Princes Street in the First New Town posed an interesting test for the system. We think of it as being only a street built on one side, but there is of course a single block built on the south side at its eastern end. This was originally individual properties and prior to 1811 these were numbered in their own series as “Princes Street South Side”. The principal, northern side of the street did not need the geographic qualifier.

The 1811 re-numbering decided to treat the street as if it had a single side, with numbers 1-9 allocated to the south side, and the northern side numbered from 10 upwards. This arrangement was broken in 1898 when the block to the south was demolished to make way for the North British Railway Hotel (now The Balmoral), which took the number 1; numbers 2 to 9 Princes Street have therefore never existed ever since.

In 1826 it was reported in the local press that a wholesale renumbering of the “suburbs” has been completed, that street names had now been painted on the corners and that a move was being made to begin painting up the names of the closes of the Old Town.  The considered order of this new system was not to last however. By 1826, properties on Princes Street were plagued with subdivision of the original houses into commercial premises, requiring the Town Council to approve the use of A, B, C etc. to distinguish each new door from its original number. By 1856, the Cowgate was said to be in “a most hopeless state of darkness” and in 1869 the Lawnmarket was “greatly confused and unintelligible”. However a systematic approach was never taken again, and renumbering thereafter took place on a case-by-case basis, approved by a special council committee. Exceptions and curiosities still prevail however. Summerhall Place, for instance, was re-numbered as 5 to 13 Causewayside in 1935. However the uproar this provoked in its residents caused it to be renamed back to Summerhall Place, but with the numbers in the Causewayside sequence retained: to this day the latter street still starts its numbering of odd doors at number 15.

Part 5. Street Naming and Re-Naming

Street names, even those we are most familiar with, do not always remain the same forever and some change before they are even built. An early copy of James Craig’s original printed plan of the New Town from 1767 has the streets we know now as Princes, George and Queen referred to instead as simply the South, Principal and North; the names were yet to be decided.

A later copy of the same year, which James Craig apparently took to London, had named these streets as St. Giles Street (after the patron saint of the City), George Street (for the King, George III) and Forth Street, an unofficial innovation of Craig’s own doing, probably on account of the views it commanded towards that body of water. The magistrates of the city were unhappy with Forth Street and the King – who was shown the copy during Craig’s visit to London – was displeased with St. Giles, as he associated that name with the London district of the same name which had a reputation as a slum, hardly befitting his glorious new capital of North Britain.

The King’s Scottish physician – Sir John Pringle – sent a letter expressing the displeasure and making some suggestions for improvement to Lord Provost Laurie, and a new copy was made, with George Street central, flanked by Queen Street to the north, and Prince’s Street to the south for George, Prince of Wales. With the cross-streets including Hanover and Frederick (the second son), the King approved and this new trend of naming streets in the city – to the glory of the reigning dynasty – was instituted. Prior to this, nearly all the street names in the city had been functional, describing the builder, owner or principal occupant(s). . An old saying amongst Edinburgh schoolboys – to help them remember – went; “The Queen and the Prince, the Rose and the Thistle, and King George in the Middle”.

You may have noticed in these earlier maps that illustrate Princes Street that some use the form “Prince’s Street” and that others use the more familiar “Princes”. So which is it? The simple answer is both, but never Princes’ Street! The table below gives the varieties used for Princes Street and George Street from the first royally approved plans of 1767 to 1831. The matter was finally settled in 1846 for Princes Street when the GPO street directories finally abandoned the original form of Prince’s Street. That Princes Street was named for two Princes is categorically not the case, it is not a plural, it is a possessive case, it is one where the apostrophe has been lost over time; it was for Prince George and Prince George alone, his brother Prince Frederick got Frederick Street.

Another change in the planned New Town streetnames affected the Northern explansion around 1806; the streets planned with the Latin names of Caledonia Street, Hibernia Street and Anglia Street were Anglicised to Scotland, Dublin and London Streets respectively before any shovels were in the ground. At the same time, a planned Albion Row was merged with the start of Albany Street and took the latter name.

An opposite issue to renaming a street occurred in 1803, when Mrs Maxwell of Carriden (Mary Charlotte Bouverie) complained that her house was on a street with no name! She lived at the extreme west end of the First New Town, where the as-yet unnamed street to the west of Charlotte Square met Princes Street. A disagreement with the Moray Estate over land boundaries meant that the original planned street on the west side of Charlotte Square was never built, and what had been constructed had been given no name. This was resolved by Christening this portion Hope Street, after Charles Hope of Granton, Lord Advocate and the local MP (this is the explanation given by Stuart Harris. An explanation may be that it was for Admiral Sir George Hope of Carriden, a 2nd cousin of Lord Granton). The following year we find a Miss Blair in the Post Office directory for Hope Street.

An idiosyncrasy of some Edinburgh streets is where the road has one name, but the street addresses along it have another. This is normally the result of a planned or pre-existing street being built along in a piecemeal, protracted manner. A good example of this is London Road, a planned new roadway into the city from the east formed around 1819, but where development along it took around 80 years to complete. Individual street blocks of houses were named by their landowner or builder, after themselves, family connections, royalty, battles, topography, pre-existing local names and more, with opposite sides of the same road frequently having different addresses. In its 1.4 mile Length, there are 19 different street addresses, with London Road itself being the address for relatively few premises.

Another point in case is Leith Walk, a historic walking route between Edinburgh and its port that was only very gradually developed into a carriageway and built along. From the very top (the south or Edinburgh end) of “the Walk” – beginning at current Picardy Place, the facing “pairs” of places on opposite sides of the road went Union Place / Greenside Place; Antigua Street / Baxters Place; Gayfield Place & Haddington Place / Elm Row; Croall Place / Brunswick Place; Albert Place / Shrub Place; George Place / Crichton Place. At this point we reach the Leith and Edinburgh boundary at Pilrig Street.

Continuing down into Leith, the historic addresses went Fyfe Place; Kings Place; Orchardfield / Heriot Buildings; Springfield; Ronaldson’s Buildings; Stead’s Place / Anderson Place; Allison’s Place; Whitfield’s Place / Macneill’s Place; Cassell’s Place / Queen’s Place. In 1933, the council street naming committee made a proposal to merge Leith Walk and Leith Street into a continuous numbering sequence and to remove all the older intermediate addresses. Options included calling the whole length simply “Leith Walk”; splitting it into a “Leith Walk South” and “Leith Walk North”; extending Leith Street north to London Road, with everything north of that being Leith Walk. This proposal was never taken forward, and it is only on the Leith half of Leith Walk (i.e. north of Pilrig Street) where the houses are named and numbered as Leith Walk. On the Edinburgh side, the traditional names remains to this day, even though the roadway itself is formally called Leith Walk.

Street renaming generally took place on a case-by-case basis, usually to remove a duplicate name. An exception was a wholesale renaming and de-duplication exercise undertaken in a systematic way between 1965-69 upon the introduction of Post Codes for sending mail. This caused an issue where the traditional use of the old post towns or burghs to disambiguate between streets in the formerly separate burghs of Edinburgh, Leith and Portobello was superseded by simply using “Edinburgh” and the post code. At least 56 streets were renamed in this period, with the general practice being that the Edinburgh name was kept and any duplicates in Leith or Portobello (or both!) were renamed. This resulted in 15 old Leith street names and 8 in Portobello being lost and changed. There were exceptions however, and 5 Edinburgh names were changed where they conflicted with Leith, 4 Leith names were changed where they conflicted with Portobello and 3 Portobello names were changed where they conflicted with Leith.

Amongst others, Edinburgh lost its Pitt Street (to Dundas Street), Duke Street (to Dublin Street), Chapel Lane (to Cathedral Lane), Mitchell Street (to Peffer Place). Leith lost its George Street (to North Fort Street), Queen Street (to Shore Place), Albany Street (to Portland Street), Bank Street (to Seaport Street). Portobello lost its Hope Street (to Rosefield Street), Ramsay Lane (to Beach Lane), Melville Street (to Bellfield Street), Pitt Street (to Pittville Street). The village of Newhaven lost its St. Andrew’s Square (to Fishmarket Square) to avoid confusion with St. Andrew Square in Edinburgh, and it lost its Parliament Square (to Great Michael Square) for the same reason. Across the city as a whole, multiple streets with “Church” or “Hope” in their name were also altered to avoid potential duplicates or ambiguity.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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Sechelt has cute street names, I like them much more than numbered ones.

#Sechelt #SunshineCoast #StreetNames

This private road in the Broadmoor neighborhood is named for the Union Bay shoreline it parallels. (Foster Island is about 950 feet to the northwest.) https://www.writesofway.org/e-shore-drive/ #Broadmoor #Seattle #StreetNames #UnionBay

This private road in the Broadmoor neighborhood is named for the Union Bay shoreline it parallels. (Foster Island is about 950 feet to the northwest.) https://www.writesofway.org/e-shore-drive/ #Broadmoor #Seattle #StreetNames #UnionBay

This private road in the Broadmoor neighborhood is named for the Union Bay shoreline it parallels. (Foster Island is about 950 feet to the northwest.) https://www.writesofway.org/e-shore-drive/ #Broadmoor #Seattle #StreetNames #UnionBay

This private road in the Broadmoor neighborhood is named for the Union Bay shoreline it parallels. (Foster Island is about 950 feet to the northwest.) https://www.writesofway.org/e-shore-drive/ #Broadmoor #Seattle #StreetNames #UnionBay

This private road in the Broadmoor neighborhood is named for the Union Bay shoreline it parallels. (Foster Island is about 950 feet to the northwest.) https://www.writesofway.org/e-shore-drive/ #Broadmoor #Seattle #StreetNames #UnionBay

“Dzidzilalich” has been proposed as an honorary name for the new Elliott Way in downtown #Seattle, and for Alaskan Way from Elliott Way to S Dearborn Street. I'm glad to see the name return to our waterfront, but couldn't we have done better than "Elliott Way" for the new road? https://www.writesofway.org/dzidzilalich-return-seattle-waterfront-honorary-name-elliott-way-alaskan-way/ #Lushootseed #Duwamish #Suquamish #Muckleshoot #StreetName #StreetNames #NativeNames #NativeAmerican

“Dzidzilalich” has been proposed as an honorary name for the new Elliott Way in downtown #Seattle, and for Alaskan Way from Elliott Way to S Dearborn Street. I'm glad to see the name return to our waterfront, but couldn't we have done better than "Elliott Way" for the new road? https://www.writesofway.org/dzidzilalich-return-seattle-waterfront-honorary-name-elliott-way-alaskan-way/ #Lushootseed #Duwamish #Suquamish #Muckleshoot #StreetName #StreetNames #NativeNames #NativeAmerican

“Dzidzilalich” has been proposed as an honorary name for the new Elliott Way in downtown #Seattle, and for Alaskan Way from Elliott Way to S Dearborn Street. I'm glad to see the name return to our waterfront, but couldn't we have done better than "Elliott Way" for the new road? https://www.writesofway.org/dzidzilalich-return-seattle-waterfront-honorary-name-elliott-way-alaskan-way/ #Lushootseed #Duwamish #Suquamish #Muckleshoot #StreetName #StreetNames #NativeNames #NativeAmerican

“Dzidzilalich” has been proposed as an honorary name for the new Elliott Way in downtown #Seattle, and for Alaskan Way from Elliott Way to S Dearborn Street. I'm glad to see the name return to our waterfront, but couldn't we have done better than "Elliott Way" for the new road? https://www.writesofway.org/dzidzilalich-return-seattle-waterfront-honorary-name-elliott-way-alaskan-way/ #Lushootseed #Duwamish #Suquamish #Muckleshoot #StreetName #StreetNames #NativeNames #NativeAmerican

“Dzidzilalich” has been proposed as an honorary name for the new Elliott Way in downtown #Seattle, and for Alaskan Way from Elliott Way to S Dearborn Street. I'm glad to see the name return to our waterfront, but couldn't we have done better than "Elliott Way" for the new road? https://www.writesofway.org/dzidzilalich-return-seattle-waterfront-honorary-name-elliott-way-alaskan-way/ #Lushootseed #Duwamish #Suquamish #Muckleshoot #StreetName #StreetNames #NativeNames #NativeAmerican

“Largely purged in years past were public commemorations of Soviet leaders. Now the targets include cultural figures like Pushkin and Dostoevsky.” #ukraine #StreetNames #statues #renaming #derussification

https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/ukraine-resumes-task-of-removing-russian-statues-and-street-names-01672170990

Hi! I’m Benjamin Lukoff, a local historian born, raised, and living in Seattle. I’ve been an “address nerd” since I was young, and this blog, which I started in 2019, focuses on exploring the stories behind the names of Seattle’s streets. I’ll post articles from there as well as interesting tidbits I find on the web. Welcome! https://writesofway.org/about #introduction #NameStudies #names #onomastics #LocalHistory #LocalHistorians #Seattle #names #streets #StreetNames #cities #maps #plats #history

Hi! I’m Benjamin Lukoff, a local historian born, raised, and living in Seattle. I’ve been an “address nerd” since I was young, and this blog, which I started in 2019, focuses on exploring the stories behind the names of Seattle’s streets. I’ll post articles from there as well as interesting tidbits I find on the web. Welcome! https://writesofway.org/about #introduction #NameStudies #names #onomastics #LocalHistory #LocalHistorians #Seattle #names #streets #StreetNames #cities #maps #plats #history

Hi! I’m Benjamin Lukoff, a local historian born, raised, and living in Seattle. I’ve been an “address nerd” since I was young, and this blog, which I started in 2019, focuses on exploring the stories behind the names of Seattle’s streets. I’ll post articles from there as well as interesting tidbits I find on the web. Welcome! https://writesofway.org/about #introduction #NameStudies #names #onomastics #LocalHistory #LocalHistorians #Seattle #names #streets #StreetNames #cities #maps #plats #history

Hi! I’m Benjamin Lukoff, a local historian born, raised, and living in Seattle. I’ve been an “address nerd” since I was young, and this blog, which I started in 2019, focuses on exploring the stories behind the names of Seattle’s streets. I’ll post articles from there as well as interesting tidbits I find on the web. Welcome! https://writesofway.org/about #introduction #NameStudies #names #onomastics #LocalHistory #LocalHistorians #Seattle #names #streets #StreetNames #cities #maps #plats #history

The thread about an A to Z (almost!) of Edinburgh and Leith streets named after women

For International Women’s Day (on March 8th 2021), I thought I would flick through the books and do an A-Z (as far as possible) of Edinburgh and Leith places named after women. Unsurprisingly there are relatively few, to pick from – but there are some fascinating women behind some of the names.
n.b I have tried to keep this thread up to date on occasion, with new street names to fill in some blanks.

A is for Annfield in Newhaven. Named for Ann Steuart, wife of John Steuart of Blairhaw, who built a house in late Georgian times. There was a trend for giving places fancy names at the time in the form x–field, where x was usually the name of a wife or daughter.

B is for Mary Burton (1819-1909), a suffragist and campaigner for women’s rights who lived at Liberton Bank House between 1844 and 1898. A street of new-build houses nearby in Gilmerton has been named Burton Place in her honour.

C is for Clarice Mcnab Lane, a brand new street off of West Bowling Green Street in Leith. Born in Leith and known usually by her married name Clarice Shaw, she was a prominent interwar Labour party member and activist. She was MP for Kilmarnock for a year, dying in 1946.

D is for Dauline Road. Marion, Margaret and Helen Dauline of South Queensferry were accused, alongside Helen Thomson, Marion Stein, Marion Little and Isobel Young, of Witchcraft in 1643. At least 8 of the women were executed by burning at the stake. A new build street in South Queensferry is name for them.

E is for Edith Burnet Hughes (1888-1971), the first practising female architect in the UK, establishing her own firm in 1920, and the first woman nominated to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). She was born at West Circus Place in Stockbridge and is buried in Warriston Cemetery. A new build street that can be seen from that cemetery and that is about half a mile downstream on the Water of Leith from Stockbridge has been named Hughes Close in her honour.

F is for Flora Stevenson‘s, a primary school in Comely Bank named for the Glasgow-borne social reformer who was an early campaigner (with her sister Louisa) for women’s entry into universities and became an organiser of education in the city for poor children; particularly girls and would serve as a convenor on the Edinburgh School Board.

G is for Geissler Drive, named for Alison Geissler and (as of June 2020) one of the newest additions to the street names of Edinburgh. Alison was a lauded glass engraver with an MBE for her services to her craft and lived to the grand age of 103. Her grandson is Martin Geissler, the ITV and BBC news broadcaster and correspondent.

H is for Hope Street. Not named after a woman, but named because of a woman. In 1803, Mrs Maxwell of Carriden (nee Mary Charlotte Bouverie) wrote to the town council to complain that she lived on a street with no name. The council obliged by naming it for a man: Stuart Harris says this may have been Charles Hope of Granton MP, Lord Advocate. An alternative explanation may be that it was for Admiral Sir George Hope of Carriden, a 2nd cousin of Granton.

I is for Elsie Inglis Way, named in 2019 in Abbeyhill for the well known (but not well enough) WW1 military doctor, suffragist, teacher, campaigner, philanthropist, organiser and pioneer of women’s’ medicine in the city. A maternity hospital nearby once bore her name.

J is for Jex-Blake Drive, a new build street in Abbeyhill named for Sophia Jex-Blake, one of the first seven women to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh, the first female doctor in Scotland and founder of 2 medical schools for women, Bruntsfield Maternity Hospital, amongst many other things.

K is for Mary King’s Close, that well known tourist trap, and subject of endless paranormal hot air. Mary King was the widow of Alexander King, a burgess of the city, in the early-mid 17th c. – except that she probably wasn’t… Who she actually was is not entirely clear. The close had been partially abandoned after the plague of 1645, and was still vacant in 1751 when a neighbouring tenement collapsed. This opened up a gap that was widened to create a space for the construction of the Royal Exchange, which would later become the City Chambers. The tenements in the upper parts of Mary King’s Close (and two others) were largely built over, but the lower parts remained occupied, and were so well into the 19th century. It was the construction of Cockburn Street in 1854 that really swept away Mary King’s Close.

L is for Lady Lawson Street, formed from Lady Lawson’s Wynd. The Lawsons were landowners in the West Port as early as the 15th century. That Lady Lawson herself became recorded as landowner is unusual and notable in itself.

M is for Murray Cottages, named after David Murray, Deputy Controller for Excise in Scotland, but on behalf of his last surviving daughter, who left the family fortune to a fund for providing housing for the “deserving (and pious) poor“. The Almonry Fund (an Almoner is someone who distributes funds to the poor, usually on behalf of the church) was set up on her behalf in 1905. Prospective candidates were to be “sober, respectable, men and women about sixty years” (i.e. a married couple) who “must have spent most of their lives in Edinburgh or its immediate vicinity and preferably have belonged to the Church of Scotland“.

N is for Nicolson Square (and Street). These were built between 1765-1780 on the park lands and house of Lady Nicolson, Elizabeth Carnegie. She moved to the Pear Tree House (now the Pear Tree pub) to allow the road and square to be built. The Nicolson Baronets had owned the land here since the early 16th century, the title becoming dormant in 1743 on the death of her husband, the 7th Baronet. The house (highlighted yellow) remained here until around 1790 when Nicolson Street and South Bridge were connected.

O is for Lady Nairne a neighbourhood (and Beefeater pub and restaurant) in Duddingston with 4 streets taking the honorific name of Carolina Oliphant. Baroness Nairne lived here in the early 19th century. A prolific songwriter, and contemporary of Burns, amongst other well known romantic ballads she wrote “Will ye no’ come back again?” and “Charlie is my Darling“.

P is for Pape’s Cottages in Roseburn, named by George Pape in his will, in memory of his wife Jessie Paterson, who was the landowner of Coltbridge House. The three cottages were built for “the use of poor widows in all time coming“.

Q is for Queens take your pick of Queens; Anne, Charlotte, Margaret, Alexandra, Mary of Guise or Ferry. Queen Charlotte Street in Leith, was originally Charlotte Street, but was renamed in the 1960s to avoid confusion with the street of the same name in Edinburgh’s New Town.

R is for the Reverend Elizabeth Wardlaw, whose name is on the name bank for Leith. The long time minister of Hermitage United Free Church and a Councillor for Leith Links from 1984 – 2003. She was a supporter of Leith Festival.

S is for Saint Triduana, long associated with Restalrig, and gives her name to some streets and a medical centre in the area. Her beautiful eyes were lusted after by a Pictish king, so she plucked them out and sent him them, thereafter devoting her life to the blind. The church at Restalrig and the cult of Triduana were both destroyed in the Scottish reformation in 1560.

T is for Townswomen’s Guild Walk, one of the paths across the Meadows. It was named in 1973 after the gift to the city of the trees that line it by the guild.

I’m afraid I drew a blank on U…

V is for anything named after Queen Victoria. Victoria Terrace, Park, School, Baths etc. Take your pick, the lady needs no introduction.

W is for Mary and Barbara Walker of Coates, sisters who lived at Coates Hall in the 19th c. They gifted the land for – and huge funds to – the Episcopal Church of Scotland in 1873 for the building of St Mary’s Cathedral. Coates Hall was left by them in their will as the Choir School.

X is a blank, as there are no X– streets in Edinburgh.

Y is for Lady Yester, Margaret Hay, who in 1647 gave a benefaction of 10,000 Merks to the city to establish a new parish church. This became known as Lady Yester’s Kirk, and served the south east district of the Old Town.

Finally, there is only one Z street in Edinburgh (which is named for Zetland, the archaic form of Shetland), so that too is a blank.

I’ve frequently referred to the council’s name bank here, you can see it too at this link. There is meant to be a presumption towards giving women’s names priority, but look at the list and make of that priority what you will.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.