Britain's lewdest street names expunged

Britain has been robbed of the lewdest and rudest aspects of its national heritage. A new survey shows how the prim sections of post-medieval and Victorian society succeeded in expunging an entire genre of filthy street names from the national consciousness.

Virtually every town and city in medieval Britain ­ including many small market towns ­ boasted red-light streets with extraordinarily blunt official names such as Grope Lane, Cock Lane, Finkle Street (Fondle Street) and even Puppekirtylane (Poke Skirt Lane).

But out of an estimated 50 or more such street names, only one survives today. Shrewsbury in Shropshire alone seems to have made a stand against prudishness to preserve its Grope Lane.

The survey, just published as part of an archaeological book on sex and the past entitled Indecent Exposure, shows how the towns of Wells, York, Oxford, Worcester, Reading, Banbury, Newcastle, Southampton, Hereford, Norwich, Bristol, Mildenhall, Orford and London all lost their lewder street names. In many cases, 17th-century Puritans or 19th-century vicars got rid of offending nomenclature. But in some places grope was simply changed to grape or grove.

The survey ­ by the British archaeologist Nigel Baker and the historian Richard Holt ­ has also revealed how prostitution flourished in medieval town centres, despite laws banishing it to the suburban peripheries.

A detailed geographical analysis of the medieval locations of the dirtiest street names suggests that prostitution normally took place in the immediate vicinity of a town's market place or main high street.

Often the red-light area was just a stone's throw from the town council chambers ­ and sex, it seems, was often enjoyed in the open air in the lewdly named lanes as well as in nearby buildings.

But the proximity to a town's political heart of all this hectic activity seems to have hastened the demise of the sexier genre of British street names.

"Our research shows prostitution was a much more important part of medieval city centre economies than previously thought," said Dr Baker, of Birmingham University.