The stories behind city's street names

A NOTTINGHAM historian once wrote: “Street names belong to times when towns grew too slowly to need the services of borough engineers to plan new streets.

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The scene on Beastmarket Hill on a cold winter's day in 1909. This was the location of the cattle market Long Row to Market Street - track laying for the electric tram system, caught on camera in about 1900

“Streets grew from lanes, lanes from footpaths and footpaths commenced as tracks, named by the people themselves.”

That, he suggested, was the origin of streets carrying names like Cliff, Brook and Ford, indicating certain landmarks along the route.

It was not until comparatively recent times that the naming of streets became the prerogative of the local authorities... and they didn’t always get it right.

Nottingham, for instance, once had two Glasshouse Streets.

In the late 1700s, there was a glass-works in the vicinity of modern Fisher Gate, owned by an Italian count, which would almost certainly have been the foundation for a Glasshouse Street in that part of Nottingham.

Fisher Gate was where the men who fished the Trent and Leen made their homes; Pilcher Gate was the home of the pilchers, or furriers, and Fletcher Gate was so named through its association with butchers, or fleshers, although there are other theories associating it with arrow makers.

Barker Gate was home to the tanners, so called because of their use of a byproduct of oak bark called tannin, which was used in the tanning process; the dictionary definition says: “a person or machine that removes bark from trees or logs or prepares it for tanning.”

Chapel Bar evolved from Bar Gate, another town gate, where a small chapel was built for passing travellers; Bridlesmith Gate from the makers of equine things like saddles and harnesses; Byard Lane probably takes its name from the word “byre”, meaning huts where animals were kept ready for slaughter, and its proximity to Fletcher Gate seems to support that explanation.