Toponyms and urban morphology, the imbued meaning of street names within circumstances of urban change: The case of Turnagain Lane, London

Cities are in perpetual modification as a continuum over large expanses of time, with urban growth proceeding according to the measures and laws of a historical evolutionary process. Within the broad research field of urban morphology the fine grain attention to the details of historicity can be extended to the less tangible aspects of associated place and street names, the legacy and/or redundancy of their imbued meaning set within the transforming specific urban condition. Street names are predominantly assigned to people or important events and as such can often be rewritten as socio- political contexts change; conversely, as the urban fabric evolves, street names depicting specific geographical features may be prone to redundancy in meaning. This paper explores the potential at the intersection of urban morphology and toponymic research through analysis of diachronic evidence to assess a pertinent case study street configuration. The study reveals how an original denotation of place is an evolving layer within the palimpsest of urban transformational processes. The implications are that toponyms contribute evidence in morphological research as elements that label urban places particularly when they carry description of a past urban arrangement.