Vauxhall Road, Again

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 89489

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at a...> 
wrote:
> Honestly, I'm not obsessed. It's just my work involves me sitting 
> around doing nothing waiting for things to happen sometime and 
> research helps fill up some of the time.
> 
> Basically, I am now more or less totally convinced that a section 
> of London in the vicinity of Kennington Lane was known as Vauxhall 
> Road (or rather as The Vauxhall Road) until quite recently, even 
> though it may have officially had another name, and the Vauxhall 
> Road name was still in relatively common used. Other evidence 
> gathered (outlined in previous posts) make me believe it was 
> probably Kennington Lane or part therof, but the most recent 
> material I've uncovered doesn't actually confirm which road it is - 
> just that there was definitely a road being referred to by the name 
> Vauxhall Road or the Vauxhall Road in that general area.

Geoff:
Actually, Shaun, you've run into one of those odd English usages. The 
giveaway is the direct article... "the" Vauxhall Road. If the batsman 
had belted the ball hard enough to land in what is now Kennington 
Lane, which would be a feat worthy of Superman, the paper would have 
said "hit the ball into Vauxhall Road" - no article.

There is a usage in English in which people will refer to a road by 
the direction in which it is going and NOT by its correct name. If, 
for example, some one in years past had asked me for directions to, 
say, Vauxhall, when I was standing in Wandsworth High Street, I might 
say something like "Take the Battersea road out of Wandsworth and 
when you reach Battersea, keep straight on along Nine Elms Lane." The 
Battersea road is actually Ram Street followed by York Road. Here, 
where I now live in West Somerset, I might speak of taking the 
Minehead road which, in fact, is called Porlock Road....