Discovering Street Names. Meeting on 12 November 2015

Poster for Discovering Street Names meeting, 12 November 2015. Designed by Sylvia Jones.
Poster for Discovering Street Names meeting, 12 November 2015. Designed by Sylvia Jones.

The meeting opened with a brief AGM, with Howard Slatter outlining the work of the last year. In the financial report, he noted a grant from the Community Chest to support printing flyers about the Group. He referred to five public meetings, a visit to the American Cemetery, a talk about local archaeology, a visit to the Anstey Hall Barns archaeological site and walks around the churchyard and the village centre. A number of projects were underway: contributions to Lives of the First World War, where 180 people from the village had been identified; progress with the People of Trumpington database, now including 11,000 names; recording headstones in the extension churchyard, Shelford Road, and identifying the individuals; working on the series of history trails; and continued developments to the web site and responses to enquiries. The meeting approved the continuation of the existing Committee and Howard encouraged anyone who was interested in joining the Committee to come forward.

The AGM was followed by presentations by Howard Slatter, Edmund Brookes, Randall Evans, Andrew Roberts and Stephen Brown about the origin of some of the established and new street and building names in Trumpington:

Streets referred to during the meeting. Source: © OpenStreetMap contributors (Howard Slatter).
Streets referred to during the meeting. Source: © OpenStreetMap contributors (Howard Slatter).

Trumpington historic area: Foster Road and Maris Lane;
Trumpington Meadows development: names related to the Plant Breeding Institute (Otter Close, Piper Road and Consort Avenue);
Clay Farm development, northern area: Northrop Road, Whitelocks Drive;
Clay Farm development, southern area: Hobson Avenue, Hobson Road and Hobson Square, Chaplen Street, Cornwell Road, Whittington Road, Seven Acres (Kingfisher Gardens, Lapwing Avenue, Skylark Road and Partridge Close);
Glebe Farm development: Glebe Farm Drive (including Hackett House and Carter House), Beech Drive (Maddox House).

In introducing the presentations, Howard Slatter refer to the list of street names and derivations on the web site. In recent years, 56 street names and 18 building names had been adopted for the major new developments in Trumpington. The City Council had been very aware of the value of involving residents in the naming process. Howard mentioned that the Trumpington Local History Group and the Trumpington Residents’ Association had been consulted about potential names and had proposed names with local significance. With the support of the developers, the majority of the new names had been taken from these lists. The two groups and the City Council had received an award for good practice in 2013. For further information, see the checklist of local streets and details about the derivation of street names.

There were previous meetings about street names in March 2008 and March 2011.