Place-making with time-depth and connection:
how to use historical place-names in modern developments
Speaker: Dr Abigail Lloyd.
Wednesday, 18th March 2026 7.30pm.
Subject: New housing and development schemes are often controversial and challenging to deliver. Communities may feel a keen sense of loss as the landscape around them changes. The names chosen for the new streets can feel bland, homogeneous, and commercially driven. The Institute for Name-Studies, based at the University of Nottingham, is the home of the Survey of English Place-Names, a British Academy project carried out by the English Place-Name Society for over a hundred years. Recently, researchers from the Institute partnered with GeoPlace LLP (a partnership between Local Government Authorities and the Ordnance Survey), as well as four specific local authorities, including East Cheshire, to demonstrate how to use rigorously researched historical place-names in modern street naming. This talk will explain the project (as well as other related research at the Institute), its results and future possibilities, including the legislative framework, involving street naming and numbering officers, and national policy requirements. Historical names represent a rich seam of evidence which enable us to bring to life the particular, distinctive, local character of a place and its past, its communities, their language and stories. This talk will show you how and why it matters.
Biography: Abigail comes from a varied background, including practice as a Commercial Chancery barrister. She now researches the historical landscape, using place-names in particular to aid understanding. Her PhD – When is a hill not simply a hill? Looking again at nuance in (early) medieval place-names – focussed on the relationship between hills and medieval settlement and farming in historical place-names, shedding light on various linguistic communities along the way. She has published on this topic as well as on the importance of using field-name material in the HER.
She has been involved in the planning system, both secular and ecclesiastical, in various roles, including as a DCMS appointment to the Statutory Advisory Committee, as Chair of the Oxford Diocesan Advisory Committee and running the University of Oxford’s public inquiry course. At the Institute for Name-Studies, she partnered with GeoPlace LLP and various local authorities to explore the use of historical place-name information in street naming for modern developments.
As a research associate at the University of Nottingham, she has been developing the national digital database of historical place-names, including GIS-mapped web applications, whilst, at the University of Cambridge, she has been involved in a project mapping the location and perception of historical wetlands prior to drainage. Abigail is usually to be found sinking into an upland bog, looking for a view!
The lecture will take place at the Grosvenor Museum Lecture Theatre at 7.30pm.
Civic Trust members have FREE admission to the lectures at the Grosvenor Museum. Guests are welcome £5 on the door.