What is Street Origin?
Street Origin is a reference archive dedicated to the history of British street names. Every street name is a fragment of local history — a record of who owned the land, what trade was carried out there, which building once stood on the corner, or which event shaped the neighbourhood. Most of that history goes unnoticed by the people who walk those streets every day.
Our aim is to make that history visible and accessible. Each page traces a street name from its earliest documented form through to the present — drawing on historical maps, deeds, local records, and the work of historians and archaeologists who have spent careers piecing together the urban past.
"Every street name is a compressed history of the place it describes."
Where we're starting
We're beginning with Southwark, one of London's oldest and most historically layered boroughs. From the Roman bridgehead at Borough High Street to Shakespeare's theatre district at Bankside, from the medieval leather trade of Bermondsey to the Victorian railway arches of Druid Street — Southwark has more named streets with documented histories than almost anywhere else in Britain.
It's also a borough where the gap between the street and its history is particularly stark. Millions of people cross London Bridge or walk past the Clink every year without knowing the stories written into the ground beneath them.
How it works
Each street page is researched using primary and secondary historical sources — the Victoria County History, British History Online, the Survey of London, Ordnance Survey records, the Museum of London Archaeology, and local history collections. Where sources conflict or are ambiguous, we say so.
Pages are structured in tiers based on the depth of available historical record. Major streets with rich documented histories receive longer, more detailed treatment. Smaller residential streets — often named after Victorian landowners or developers — receive a shorter, focused account of what is known.
For more detail on our research standards and sourcing, see the Methodology page.
What comes next
Southwark is the pilot. Once complete, we'll move to the rest of London — 32 further boroughs — and then outward to towns and cities across England, Scotland, and Wales. The full project covers several hundred thousand named streets. We're building it street by street.
If you spot an error, have a source we've missed, or know the history of a street that isn't yet covered, we'd like to hear from you.