Ledbury Street Names

Ledbury street names, like those of most established towns, resonate with history. When the town was first established by the bishops of Hereford and a market charter obtained from the King, the town consisted of essentially the market place (then called Middletown  and now the High Street) and six streets linked to it - at the Lower Cross there was Bishop Street, The Homend and Back Lane and at the Top Cross, New Street, The Southend and Horse Lane. Of these, three names are now gone but Horse Lane has been given a more prestigious name, the Worcester Road.  

The name of The Homend is first recorded in 1288 derived from an Old English word 'hamm'  or 'hom' probably meaning ‘land hemmed in by water or marsh’, or perhaps ‘river meadow’. Slightly more up-to-date, Churchill Meadow is not named after the wartime leader but after a well-known High Street butcher who owned the meadow, loaned it to the Observer Corps during WWII and sold it for development around 1980. In 2006 Poplar Close was simply named from the row of poplar trees that were felled to make way for the houses. 

The whole fascinating story is told in this book published by Logaston Press. It was compiled by Angela Bishop, Gillian Murray and Beryl Rowley and edited by Janet Cooper as part of the England's Past for Everyone project in Ledbury. ISBN 978 1 904396 78 9. 

The development of each of the principal streets is discussed elsewhere on this website.