The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #160858   Message #3817400
Posted By: Jack Campin
31-Oct-16 - 11:25 AM
Thread Name: BS: 1 thing by 2 or more names, local-cosmic
Subject: RE: BS: 1 thing by 2 or more names, local-cosmic
I used to live on a street with different names on each side. Leith Walk in Edinburgh was not originally a street at all, but an earthwork for gun emplacements built by Cromwell's army in 1650. Leading down to it at the top is Leith Street, which partly overlaps what used be Leith Wynd (a twisty cart track down a steep hill which was once the site of the town gibbet). From where that stops, the middle of the street is Leith Walk and the sides have different names, changing every block, for about a mile (named after the landowners who developed blocks of flats there in the 19th century). The bottom half is in Leith. I was in Haddington Place, looking across Leith Walk to Elm Row which I don't think even had any elms when it was built.

Meanwhile Leith Roads is not a road at all - it's the deepwater channel leading up the Firth of Forth towards Leith, but it hugs the Fife coast as far away from Leith as you get. And Inverleith ought to mean "the mouth of the Leith", after the Water of Leith which does in fact end up in Leith, but Inverleith is a mile from the sea and hasn't been any closer since there were humans in Scotland. And Leith-Hall is in Aberdeenshire 200 miles away.