City’s evolution traced in street names

What’s in a name?

Well, the history of a city’s evolution really, says the author of a book on naming streets.

A city’s history can be read in its street signs, notes writer and designer Tom Spalding, who points out that 30% of Cork’s streets have been renamed at one time or another.

Layers: The Design, History and Meaning of Public Street Signage in Cork and other Irish Cities is the broadcaster’s latest book.

He also leads public walks around cities and is using the innovative ‘crowd fundraising’ mechanism, fundit.ie, to raise the last few thousand euro needed to publish this latest work.

The book looks primarily at Cork, as well as Dublin, Belfast and Bristol. Mr Spalding says Cork has retained over 200 Georgian and Victorian Street signs.

He has researched 940 addresses, with 1,400 nameplates in Cork and finds over 170 (30%) Cork City Centre addresses have been renamed since 1750, versus 24% in central Dublin.

The most recent was the controversy over the renaming of Faulkener’s Lane to Opera Lane, the Owen O’Callaghan retail development on St Patrick’s Street.

“In the case of a city like Cork, which has been fought over, changed hands and burnt several times over the centuries, the opportunities for each generation to reform their surroundings are multiplied,” he says.

Naming streets or buildings after historical figures can be controversial long after their demise, he notes, pointing out it was the 1980s in Cork City before Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera had anything significant called after them.