Terrible Ward Names

[jamie]

Inspired by bsjmcr post in the Bury thread, I thought I’d create a thread to discuss terrible ward names and how they could be improved. I’m thinking of wards that are named after obscure 19th government units which mean nothing to modern day residents. Other terrible names can include naming after small streets, insignificant hamlets or areas outside the ward. They qualify as particularly terrible if they leave the reader with no idea where they actually are.

What are your terrible ward names and how would you improve them?

[andrewp]

Kings Isle. In Somerset. No one would know where it is I don’t think

[Pete Whitehead]

I would name the wards covering the town of Fakenham in North Norfolk Fakenham North and Fakenham South rather than Lancaster North and Lancaster South

[gwynthegriff]

May 4, 2019 21:14:22 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I would name the wards covering the town of Fakenham in North Norfolk Fakenham North and Fakenham South rather than Lancaster North and Lancaster South

Crewe's wards are Central, East, North, South, (you can see where this is going), West and ... St Barnabas.

Oh, and the Parish Church of St Barnabas and its Church Hall and vicarage are not in the St Barnabas Ward.

Though the polling station for the St Barnabas Ward is St Barnabas Church Hall. Which is in Crewe Central.

The Vicar is not a happy chap. He has to walk past his own Church Hall (which operates as a polling station for St Barnabas Ward) and then walk half a mile to vote. In Crewe Central.

[andrewp]

There are at least 3 new ward names used on Thursday in Taunton where virtually no one in that area would say they lived there.i told the LGBCE that and they ignored me

Victoria should be called Central. Victoria is named after one road.
Vivary should be called Killams and Mountfields. Vivary is named after a park, about 2 roads in the ward would say they lived in Vivary.
Manor and Tangier should be called Parkfield. The only thing called Tangier is a car park and some offices.

[Adrian]

Am I the only one who finds this thread somewhat sacrilegious? I think tradition and heritage are fine in their place, and the naming of local government units is one of those places. For example, I suggested that the traditional name of All Saints would be a much better name for the new Birmingham ward of "Soho and Jewellery Quarter". It hardly takes much effort for someone to find out the name of the ward they live in, and once they know this piece of information I don't think it bothers them much whether the name is "modern" or whether it's comprehensible to outsiders.

[timrollpickering]

As it's just come up in another discussion:

Neath East



Rename it, maybe:

Neath West?

[jamie]

Newcastle:
Castle - Where even is it. There’s no castles here. Could a single person know where the ward is purely from the name? Rename it as Kingston Park North and Dinnington.
Gosforth - Most of Gosforth is outside this ward. That’s presumably why other ward names include ‘South Gosforth’ and ‘West Gosforth’. Rename it ‘Gosforth Central’.
Parklands - Are there not parks elsewhere in Newcastle? Rename it ‘Gosforth North’.

North Tyneside
Northumberland - No, this ward does not cover the entire county of Northumberland. Where did the bright idea to name this ward ‘Northumberland’ come from? No idea. Rename it ‘Wallsend North’ and rename ‘Wallsend’ ward to ‘Wallsend South’.
Valley - Presumably in a Valley? The only moderately known place named ‘Valley’ is Valley Gardens in Monkseaton, which is not in this ward. Shiremoor would be a much better name.

Northumberland
Basically all large town wards - Please stick the town name in front. Nobody knows where ‘College’ is.
Amble - There is already an Amble West so presumably this ward does not cover all of Amble? Rename ‘Amble East’.
Bywell - About 10 people live here on the sparsely populated edge of the ward. Rename it ‘Ovingham’.
South Tynedale - A victim of naming wards after their local authorities predecessor. This ward doesn’t even touch the river Tyne and covers a bunch of leftover communities across mountains. The best I could come up with is ‘Allendale, Staley and Shotleyfield’.

[edgbaston]

May 4, 2019 21:14:22 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I would name the wards covering the town of Fakenham in North Norfolk Fakenham North and Fakenham South rather than Lancaster North and Lancaster South

I like it. Not just as a differentiation from the county division. But as a hark back to when, in some places, different classes would have ’proper’ and ’common’ names for the same place.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Three which affect me in Westminster and regularly cause confusion:

1) Westbourne ward doesn't include Westbourne Grove or anywhere particularly near it. It's named after Westbourne Green and Westbourne Park.
2) Little Venice ward doesn't include the Little Venice estate, which is in Westbourne ward
3) Hyde Park ward doesn't include any part of Hyde Park itself; it's named after the Church Commissioners' Hyde Park Estate north of the park.

Also much of what residents call Bayswater is in Lancaster Gate ward not Bayswater ward.

[edgbaston]

May 4, 2019 21:27:52 GMT Adrian said:

Am I the only one who finds this thread somewhat sacrilegious? I think tradition and heritage are fine in their place, and the naming of local government units is one of those places. For example, I suggested that the traditional name of All Saints would be a much better name for the new Birmingham ward of "Soho and Jewellery Quarter". It hardly takes much effort for someone to find out the name of the ward they live in, and once they know this piece of information I don't think it bothers them much whether the name is "modern" or whether it's comprehensible to outsiders.

Agreed. My exception would be incorrect compass points as Jamie has highlighted, which could be genuinely misleading

[rivers10]

Most of the Liverpool wards have inappropriate names in large part due to many of them shunning their obvious name and instead naming themselves after a road (Picton, Greenbank, Warbreck, County etc)

The worst by far though has to go to the ward, which contains all of the Calderstones area, Calderstones Park, Calderstones school and Calderstones playing fields but instead of doing the obvious and becoming the Calderstones ward it becomes Church ward despite containing no less than four different churches (none of which are of any local renown) and it DOESNT contain its namesake Church road which is in the Wavertree ward.

Massive garbage pile of a name.

[jamie]

Durham

Esh and Witton Gilbert - Esh is tiny and Esh Winning, which is much larger, is in another ward. If you have to include the sparsely populated west in the name, , Witton Gilber and Cornsay’ would cover a larger area while clearly only referring to places actually in the ward.
Elvet and Gilesgate - Elvet Hill is in another ward and most of Gilesgate is in another ward as well. A hard ward to name but ‘Durham Cathedral’ wouldn’t be too bad.
Durham South - The only ward to mention the city of Durham and it only includes only a tiny bit of South Durham. The majority of the ward is in Shincliffe, so ‘Shincliffe’ is a name which actually refers to what the ward encompasses.
Seaham - Makes up 3 wards yet only 1 takes the name. Rename it ‘Seaham North’ and the others ‘Seaham Sourh’ and Seaham West’.
Woodhouse Close - It’s ‘Bishop Auckland South’. Stop making things complicated,

[Merseymike]

May 4, 2019 21:53:08 GMT rivers10 said:

Most of the Liverpool wards have inappropriate names in large part due to many of them shunning their obvious name and instead naming themselves after a road (Picton, Greenbank, Warbreck, County etc)

The worst by far though has to go to the ward, which contains all of the Calderstones area, Calderstones Park, Calderstones school and Calderstones playing fields but instead of doing the obvious and becoming the Calderstones ward it becomes Church ward despite containing no less than four different churches (none of which are of any local renown) and it DOESNT contain its namesake Church road which is in the Wavertree ward.

Massive garbage pile of a name.

I'm in the Church Ward in Sefton. Apparently the old urban district wards were all named after churches - So they named the unified Sefton ward "Church". It's actually the bulk of Waterloo, and the top third of Seaforth north of the A5036.

[YL]

Almost any ward called "Church" or "Victoria" or "Valley".

Calder ward, Calderdale. Let's ignore the well known town which dominates it and name it after the same river the whole borough is named after.

Rother Vale ward, Rotherham. Quite a bit of the borough is in the valley of the Rother, but quite a lot of this ward isn't.

[AdminSTB]

May 4, 2019 21:31:57 GMT timrollpickering said:

As it's just come up in another discussion:

Neath East



Rename it, maybe:

Neath West?

I mean, how, why?!

[CatholicLeft]

I used to live in Higher Croft, now I live in Blackburn South East - blech!

[Devil Wincarnate]

The Winchester City Council wards that are all St.-something.  There are surely alternatives that could be used, as they cover areas known by rather different names.

[YL]

May 4, 2019 21:27:52 GMT Adrian said:

Am I the only one who finds this thread somewhat sacrilegious? I think tradition and heritage are fine in their place, and the naming of local government units is one of those places. For example, I suggested that the traditional name of All Saints would be a much better name for the new Birmingham ward of "Soho and Jewellery Quarter". It hardly takes much effort for someone to find out the name of the ward they live in, and once they know this piece of information I don't think it bothers them much whether the name is "modern" or whether it's comprehensible to outsiders.

I think "councillor for Crookes & Crosspool" is an awful lot more useful information, whether to a local who knows where those places are or to an outsider who can easily find them on a map, than (trying to think of a rubbish name for the ward I live in) "councillor for Ryegate" or god forbid "councillor for Church".

Most of the names people are complaining about are not particularly traditional anyway (how many of them date from before 1973?) and where they refer to heritage they often do so in a cack-handed way. The dreadful "Castle" in Newcastle apparently refers to the old Castle Ward, a wapentake-like division of Northumberland, but it is just one fragment of that and there is no particular reason to use the name for that area.

[froome]

Here in B&NES the majority of ward names are sensible, but a few most definitely are not. The worst must be Westmoreland. There is no area of Bath with this name now, and nobody would know what you meant if you asked for it, but historically, in the early 20th century, there was a small area of the city that had the name and it can be found marked on street maps up to the 1970s. However, that area isn't in or indeed that near to Wrestmoreland ward. After the latest boundary changes, the new Westmoreland ward has inched back towards this area, but still doesn't include any of it.

Instead, that area now finds itself in a new ward called Oldfield Park. Everyone in Bath knows where Oldfield Park is, and it even has its own station. However, it isn't where that ward is, it is where the new version of Westmoreland ward is. However, again back in the early 20th century, Oldfield Park referred to an estate in the south of Bath which would have been where the new ward is.

The wards that surround Bath have always been called Bathavon (they were North, South and West but are now just North and South). But why? I suspect is harks back to the old Avon County Council, though those ward names didn't exist then, or it is just a lazy way to describe an area around Bath that may, or may not, include a bit of the river Avon in it or along its border. Apart from being ward names, Bathavon is never used by anyone to describe any area in or around Bath.

Lambridge ward is also a bit of an oddity. It covers two areas - Larkhall and Fairfield Park. The stream that runs through Larkhall may have been called the Lam Brook and on old maps the A4 bridge over it is called Lam Bridge, but the bridge and stream don't exist there now, they are buried underground.