Why on earth would someone create a map of UK place names, naughty or otherwise, I hear you asking. Well, the story begins 10 years ago or so when I was staying in the North of England. One day my best friend called me up and asked if I wanted to go for a drive. Of course, I agreed, being young, carefree and childless.
The quest for Penistone
It was only once I’d got into her car that I thought to ask where we were going. ‘I thought we’d start at Ramsbottom’ she replied. She then went on to inform me that because Ramsbottom, Upperthong and (the crowning jewel of our quest), Penistone, were all pretty close together we could do a fairly efficient, cheek loop around all three. We grew up in Guildford where every teenager at one point or another has giggled about walking up Jeffries Passage. So we embarked on our hunt for Ramsbottom.
After we’d returned with photos, which I will not be sharing here, I began to research. I discovered that far from being unique to Sheffield and the surrounding area, funny place names abound throughout the UK. Wet Wang! Yes – that’s actually a real place and it’s on the map. Dicks mount, Twatt, Windy Nook (heh heh), Shitterton – all real places. There are bottoms, passages, ends, nooks and more all over our moist Isle. It’s rammed full of naughty, rude, dirty, funny and silly place names.
UK’s silliest place names
At that moment I decided they had to be immortalised. And not on some basic, PowerPoint mockup either. Oh no. They deserved to be a work of art. I was going to do a map of the UK’s silliest place names. Or possible the UK’s funniest place names. I hadn’t really got that far. Trouble was, I was pretty rubbish at drawing. So I didn’t do anything.
It’s taken 10 years, but one day I realised I‘d built up enough skills to execute my vision. But there was just one problem – there were just too many silly place names. My map was so full you couldn’t actually read any of the place names. Apparently there were more funny place names in the UK than I thought. I had to reassess.
The UK’s naughtiest place names
And that’s when I decided I could actually do a series of maps. My idle daydream had morphed into something awesome. And here it is. The first in the series: I give you, the UK’s naughtiest place names map. Enjoy.