thestreetnames

Yesterday’s post mentioned Cold Harbour Lane, of which I promised a little more. The lane, which begins at Electric Avenue, was the site of the Brixton riots: according to Wikipedia, “In 1981 the Brixton riots occurred in roads near Coldharbour Lane and some windows were broken on the street itself.”.

I’ve not been able to find much about the derivation of the name; at least one source says that “the meaning of the name is obscure”, but others say that it comes from Old English cald and here-beorg, meaning a cold and cheerless place, and it is possible that it may have been a ‘no-frills’ wayside shelter.

There is a street in the Isle of Dogs called Coldharbour, and there was once a Coldharbour house east of where Cannon Street Station now stands. This was bought by Sir John de Poulteney (or Pulteney) in 1334; it burned down in the Great Fire of London but was rebuilt and used by the Watermen’s Company as a hall until the company moved to St Mary at Hill in 1778. Sir John was four times mayor of London – more about him another time.

In another recent post, about Bishop Mandell Creighton and his letters to his nephew Basil, I mentioned Fulham Palace, former official country residence of the Bishops of London. The name Fulham derives from the name Fulla and the Old English word (hamm, meaning land on the bend of a river.

Creighton shows a very human side in a letter to Basil, written from the town house of the bishop in St James’s Square:

“I am sitting at a stupid meeting & am going to fill up the time writing to you. There has been some snow: it has gone & now we have a hard frost & it is very cold. We have the Bishops of Lincoln & Chichester staying & had a large dinner party last night & another tonight. This is severe after a hard day’s work.

“Ella is with us and looks after me, as Beatrice is away & Lucia is in Paris & Mary goes to the Slade School all day so there is nobody at home but Gemma, who goes to Fulham whenever she can & roams about the garden.”