Street names provide one of the most important clues to the history of an area. Every street has one, but where do they come from? And what do they tell us about the past? Some are fairly obvious, such as High Street, or Church Street, or Cathedral Close. Others are not quite so obvious. I live in Hall Road, near Hall Yard and around the corner from Hall Place. Hall Farm is opposite us, and it is indeed farmed by a Mr Hall. But is he the person the roads are named after? Probably not, roads are not usually named after living people.

So who was this Mr Hall that much of my village seems to be named after? What did he do that is deemed so worthy of remembering? And where do I find out who he was? Sounds like a good starting point for a local study.

This street name from Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire caught my attention:

What were British schools? When were they built? Why were they built? What kind of education would you have received if you attended one? Were they free, or did you have to pay? Were they only in Melton Mowbray, or did they cover the whole country? Everybody knows few people went to school before 1870, don't they? Is this really true?

This sort of investigation can bring wider implications of social history to the study of local history.

Another couple of examples were these two from Ilkeston in Derbyshire:

Who were these gentlemen? And why were the streets named after them? When were the houses built? (Clue - they were both Generals in World War One)

So, street names can raise as many questions as they can solve. Many a town, for example, has a Station Road when the nearest railway is now many miles away. Your local town or village can, I'm sure, boast lots of similar examples. Of course street names can also change, so it might be interesting to use the current map as a starting point, and then compare the names with some of the main roads on a much older map.

How to start? A quick web search can bring up a number of sites with a history of street names. I used "street names history UK" on Google with the following results in the first two pages:

• Edinburgh Street names
• Suffolk Streets
• London Streets
• Dublin Streets

Try your local history society, Local History Magazine and The British Association for Local Historians both have web sites with contact information for a number of societies. You local library will very likely have details of any local history societies and publications.