The bell tolls for Britain’s most embarrassing street name
Bell End residents petition council to rename street to end sniggers, bullying and tumbling house prices
Patrick Sawer
Francesca Marshall
IT MAY prompt sniggers from passing motorists – with some travelling for miles to have their photographs taken next to the sign – but for the residents of one West Midlands road their street name is no laughing matter.
Indeed, so embarrassed are the good folk of this corner of the Black Country that they have petitioned the local council to change it.
Then again, if you had to confess to living in Bell End, who could blame you? And that is before people discover Bell End leads on to Mincing Lane.
Fed up with being the butt of puerile jokes a number of families have asked Sandwell council to rename their street as Bell Road, with councillors now set to discuss the request.
The residents even claim the street name is driving down house prices, saying that houses in Bell End are valued at around £60,000 less than the average £186,000 paid for similar ones on nearby Uplands Avenue. Organisers of the campaign say the name has also led to children being bullied at school.
The campaign has been launched on the change.org website, stating: “The term Bell End can be seen and used as a rude and/or an offensive word. As well as this, it can affect people and children including children being bullied and teased at school and generally now become a laughing stock as seen very recently on Facebook and other social media sites and it’s time for a change.”
It is not clear when the use of “bell end” as an insult became common. It has its roots in the similarity between a bell and an intimate part of the male anatomy. In 1992 it was used in a football web chat room to describe West Bromwich Albion fans, while Viz magazine titled its 1995 album The Big Bell End. Mind you, if Bell End’s residents feel red faced they could turn for sympathy to those living on Crotch Crescent, in Marston, Oxon.
However, given the plethora of embarrassing street names around the country – including Fanny Hands Lane in Ludford, Lincs and Slag Lane in Warrington – some of Bell End’s residents remain philosophical on the matter.
Chris Tranter, a local councillor, said: “I was born here ... and it doesn’t bother me. You get the odd giggle on the phone, it is quite amusing really.”
Bell End road once led to the former Bell End Colliery, but the name’s origin appears to lie in its proximity to Bell Hall, a Victorian Gothic mansion on the western side of Rowley Regis village.
However, a rude name can be a sense of pride for residents. In 2010 households in Shitterton, near Bere Regis, Dorset contributed £20 each to have their village’s name immortalised in stone, after pranksters repeatedly stole the roadside sign.
Volunteers then arranged a truck and crane to manoeuvre the stone into place. In the Domesday Book, Shitterton is recorded in Norman French as Scatera or Scetra, which translated means a little town that is on the stream of a midden or sewer.