Streets of the Jewellery Quarter – Name Origins
Some of my close friends will already know that I find the meaning of names absolutely fascinating! Whether it’s a new person I met with an unusual name, or an interesting place name that I came across, I just love looking it up and finding out why it was named so, and what it means.
Recently, I decided to find out why Vittoria Street carries this name, and especially why it is spelt differently, and not like the usual “Victoria”. After a little search online, I came across this article, which explains the origin of different street names in Birmingham. Have a read through when you get the chance!
Researching the street names of Birmingham
“A person of an enquiring mind, walking through the streets of an old town, can generally form some idea ofits past history by reading the names of the streets.” said Herbert New (1916), who wrote an article in which he explained the origin of around 250 Birmingham street names. Besides that, just a couple of years later, in 1929, A.H. Bevan gave a detailed account of over 2,000 Birmingham road names, dividing them into five categories according to the origin of their names:
People - landowners, tenant farmers, prominent local people and famous British people.
Places in Britain
Christian names of members of prominent families or friends of the owners of the land responsible for the roads' construction.
Particular buildings, institutions, businesses. Numerical order, geometrical shape or physical features. Material things and trees.
Foreign places.
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In the following section, I have selected a couple of streets from Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter and ordered them according to some of A.H. Bevan’s categories.
1. People - Chamberlain Place carries the name of Joseph Chamberlain, the statesman. Date: 1885. The Chamberlain Memorial in Chamberlain Square, and the Chamberlain Clock in the Jewellery Quarter are all erected in his honour. Also, his Birmingham home, Highbury Hall is a civic conference venue and is occasionally open to the public, as well as a venue for civic marriages. He was laid to rest at the Key Hill Cemetery, in Hockley, Birmingham.
3. Names - Members of Colmore family: Great Charles Street (before 1778), Edmund Street (Date: 1778), Caroline Street (before 1825), George Street (before 1825), Lionel Street (Date: before 1825), Henrietta Street (Located just outside the boundaries of the Jewellery Quarter. Date: before 1851).
4. Buildings
Newhall Street and Newhall Hill took their name from New Hall, a 17th-century mansion.
Warstone Lane. There are two explanations for this name: it is either a name that goes back to the time of the Roman occupation, when supposedly, Roman soldiers have met at the War Stone before leaving the country for military duties, or the name simply originates from “hoar stone”, or “boundary stone”.
5. Foreign places – Vittoria Street (Date: before 1851). Named after the Spanish Vitoria (current name: Vitoria-Gasteiz), a city in Northern Spain, to the south of Bilbao, in the vicinity of which the British, Portuguese and Spanish troops fought against and defeated the French troops on the 21st June 1813 during the Peninsular War, under the command of The Marquis of Wellington (Duke of Wellington, from 1814).
Bibliography:
Newman College of Education [n.d.] Birmingham Street Names. Newman Local History [online]. Available from: http://www.newmanlocalhistory.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/history4-vol7.pdf [Accessed 20th April 2018].
British Battles (2018) Battle of Vitoria. British Battles [online]. Available from: https://www.britishbattles.com/peninsular-war/battle-of-vitoria [Accessed 20th April 2018].
Wikipedia (2018) Joseph Chamberlain. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia [online]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Chamberlain [Accessed 20 April 2018].
