With Halloween fast approaching, you may be wondering as you’re driving down a deserted country lane just where the name ‘Black Cat Drive’ or ‘Bats Lane’ could possibly come from as witches and vampires are roaming abroad. To this end, Ford has plundered data from its sat nav systems to come up with the UK’s 20 scariest road names.
“These road names may appear frightening at first glance but there’s rather more to it than that,” said Dr James Willoughby, Oxford University historian. “Place-names derive usually from Old English words that were descriptive of the landscape the settlement sits in. They may look like modern words, but that’s because they have changed their shape over the centuries. Slaughters Rough is a good example. ‘Slaughter’ is generally agreed to come from an Old English word ‘slohtre’, meaning ‘muddy place’.”
Although the majority of these sinister sounding roads have an innocent origin, Dr Willoughby points out that some do carry a frightening reference to a dark chapter in Britain’s past, such as Gallows Hill in Lancaster.
“Gallows Hill is a name referring to a former place of execution,” he said. “In this particular case it refers to the place of execution of the so-called Pendle Witches, a group of a dozen witches who were tried in 1612 for the murders of 10 people by witchcraft.”
Ford’s top 20 scary road names:
- Ghost House Lane, Beeston, Nottinghamshire
- Devil’s Dyke Road, Brighton
- Blood Hill, Somersham, Suffolk
- Warlock Road, Paddington
- Black Cat Drive, Northampton
- Gallow’s Hill, Warwick
- Hallow Road, Worcester
- Witches Walk, Bridgwater
- Ducking Stool Court, Romford
- Headless Cross Drive, Redditch
- Crucifix Lane, Camberwell
- Bats Lane, Winterbourne St Martin, Dorset
- Cemetery Road, Sheffield
- Dead Lane, Colchester, Essex
- Hanging Hill Lane, Brentwood, Essex
- Hell Lane, Wakefield
- Broomstick Lane, Botley
- Stake Lane, Farnborough
- Elm Street, Manchester
- Dark Lane, Bedworth
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