The importance of placenames to local identity

As an urban designer, I feel rather lucky to be working with the built environment. To be working with such rich tapestries of interest and intrigue, I am always fascinated that even after a 10 year career, I am still constantly discovering new and exciting things about the places we live.

I made one of these recent discoveries whilst developing a design guide for the creation of three new interconnected settlements on Grimsby’s urban periphery. Prior to working on this project, I must admit I was rather unfamiliar with this part of the world, and so quickly set about researching Grimsby’s history as a place. A quick internet search taught the team about Grimsby’s history as a prestigious fishing port, being home to the world’s largest fishing fleet during the mid-twentieth century. Although we found this interesting, perhaps this isn’t ostensibly particularly helpful when creating a new, inland settlement.

Instead, we took to exploring some historic mapping of the North East Lincolnshire region to see if this would uncover any useful clues to how this part of England came to develop into the place experienced today. Quickly we identified some important physical elements, such as the presence of many long and very straight roads which create a formal grid pattern across the region. Further to this, the presence of acute ‘switch backs’ along these networks of long historic roads soon led to the formation of urban nuclei, that later grew into larger village settlement. That’s a bit more like it!

The naming of places however, is often something that is largely overlooked in the design and creation of new settlements. Instead, the modern art of placenaming is regularly left to someone within the marketing team of a large developer. This often results in large SUE developments adopting names such as The Coopers, The Grange and Sunflower Meadows, to name a few. However lovely as these names are, they don’t necessarily create a synergy between the new settlements and the location within which they have been built. However, I argue that the name of a place is of real genuine significance. The name of where you come from is what people attach themselves to, generate civic pride for, and ultimately become part of that place’s sense of community.

So whilst poring over the historic maps of Lincolnshire, we also noticed several places in the locality with similar naming patterns. This then got me thinking, I wonder if there’s any reason behind this? What we found was actually quite intriguing.

In and around Grimsby we identified a number of settlements also ending with the letters ‘by’, including the local villages of Laceby, Aylesby, and North Thoresby. Another quick look on the internet informed us that in fact place names ending in ‘by’ are generally places where the Vikings first settled in England, and interestingly this is where the term ‘by-law’ originates from. In fact, there are actually a total of 161 settlements in Lincolnshire that end with the letter ‘by’, making this really something of local significance for the region.

We also noticed a number of settlement names ending in ‘thorpe’. Examples include Grimsby’s conurbations of Beaconthorpe and Cleethorpes, historically spelt as Cleethrope. Again, it transpires the term ‘thorpe’ also has Viking origins, as these were regularly secondary settlements to nearby larger towns and villages.

Finally, we also recognised a number of settlements with linked or sub-naming. In fact, Grimsby itself used to be known as Great Grimsby, and these is a local village called Little Grimsby located just to the south. Other local examples of this naming feature include Great Coates,  Little Coates and North Coates; Scartho and Scartho Top; North Thoresby and South Thoresby; Low Toynton and High Toynton.

Understanding what makes a place what it is, is a crucial stage in being able to design and create new places with a genuine sense of place and character. Being able to do this allows us to reinforce these features, ensuring that we don’t instead slowly dilute the intrinsic elements that make up a place and result in many of the ‘placeless’ housing estates we so often find up and down the country. I have often thought that no single feature makes up a place, be that the colour of the brick or the organisation of the streets. Instead, the places we live are made up of a plethora of complex subtilties, and as this article has clearly shown, I am still very much learning what these may be.