Yahoo News The return of Slag Lane is a victory for Britain’s unwittingly rude road signs
Some people have no sense of history. Take the nitwits who complained about road signs for Slag Lane in Westbury, Wiltshire, because they believed the name was “inappropriate” – although, thankfully, Wiltshire Council has now decided to reinstate the signage after it was removed more than five years ago.
These residents appeared not to realise that the word “slag”, in this context, has nothing to do with female promiscuity: the lane was named after the slag piles at Westbury’s Victorian iron works. But regardless of the name’s true origins, they should still be proud of it. Because the fact is, Britain has a glorious and globally unrivalled history of rude-sounding street names.
Our maps are positively bursting with them. Take Spanker Lane, in Derbyshire. Or Hardon Road, in Wolverhampton. Or Butthole Lane, in Leicestershire. Then there’s Crotch Crescent (Oxford), Dick Place (Edinburgh), Fanny Avenue (Sheffield), Slaparse Lane (Devon)... The list is endless. It’s a wonder Kenneth Williams never thought to record himself reading out the index of an AA road atlas. It would have made him millions.
Admittedly, some names are so rude that there’s no alternative but to change them. In the Middle Ages, England boasted numerous streets with names such as “Grope Lane” and “C–k Lane”. The Telegraph’s guide to house style forbids me to specify the two missing letters, but perhaps it’s enough to say that such addresses were typically found in areas we would now call red light districts.
At any rate, these lanes have all long since been renamed. No doubt medieval estate agents had noticed what a terrible drag they were on house prices.
