“Sorry to bother you but can you direct me to Marlebridge Gardens – or it might be Marlebridge Place?”
“Sorry. Never heard of it. Over the Kennet there’s the romantically named Pewsey Road Bridge and the obviously named London Road Bridge and there’s another bridge over the river in the car park called…called nothing really. How do you spell it?”
“It’s M-A-R-L-E then ‘bridge’.”
“Shouldn’t you be saying it Marl-eh-bridge’ then? What’s the ‘e’ for otherwise? After all Marlborough doesn’t have an ‘e’ between its ‘l’ and its ‘b’.”
“Pass. I’ll ask someone else…perhaps someone who understands about the name Marlborough coming from the word ‘marl’.”
“Rubbish. It comes from ‘Maerla’s barrow’ – we all learnt that at school.”
Marlebridge Gardens (or Marlebridge Place – the full name has yet to chosen) is what the developers want to call the new road at what was once the Wiltshire Council depot off Salisbury Road where they are building a new care home and assisted living homes. Wiltshire Council have approved the name.
Our fictitious Marlborough citizen was only partly right: the Victoria History of Wiltshire and other sound histories refer to a derivation from ‘Maerla’s barrow’ – though they do not agree on what the barrow might be. Was it an early and erroneous reference to the Marlborough Mound as a tomb?
However, had the citizen’s smartphone not been using O2, he could have made a swift internet search and discovered that Marlebridge certainly exists. It is the proper, legal name for Henry III’s laws signed at Marlborough Castle in 1267 and known – by some – as “The Statute of Marlebridge.” Although it must be said that most indexes call them the Statute of Marlborough.
At a planning committee meeting on Monday (January 26), town councillors were pretty irate that they were being asked to rubber stamp a name they did not like.
Councillor Dobson thought a name connected with the monastery founded by St Gilbert that once stood close to the new road would be more appropriate: perhaps St Gilbert’s Close? Or perhaps a name derived from Queen Elizabeth’s fixer Robert Cecil who died in a house nearby?
Councillor Dobson said it had been Marlborough policy to name new roads after their previous occupants or occupations. So why not a name connected with the former railway station – like Old Station Road.
As one councillor said, the name Railway Cuttings was good enough for Tony Hancock. (If you are into pub quizzes, he lived at Number 23.)
Although the town council does not have much a say in choosing such names, a stiff complaint is being sent to the developers – Beechcroft – for not consulting town councillors. And the building of the care home (which some councillors thought was destined to be called Marlebridge House) continues apace.
And too much Marlebridge might finally decide whether the town is pronounced Morl-borough or Mar-borough.
They could, of course, have named the road in honour of the Church of England’s first female Bishop: Libby Lane. What’s in a name?
Councillor Margaret Rose to be Marlborough’s next Mayor
