What's in a Name?

The Town of St. George, named after the patron saint of England, was founded by Bermuda’s first Governor, Richard Moore, in 1612, and the names of the streets reflect the history of the settlement through the centuries.

One of the oldest names used by the original settlers and still used today is Water Street, which runs along the waterfront of the town. During the 1700s and 1800s, most streets were given names which simply described who lived on them, or where the street would take you. After the American Revolution loyalists to the British Crown led a flurry of renaming to demonstrate allegiance with the mother country – thus were born Queen, King and Princess Streets, plus roads named after Dukes Kent, York, Clarence and Cumberland.

Colloquial names came later in the 1800s, when locals renamed Duke of Cumberland Street Old Maids’ Lane (for obvious reasons!) Blacksmith’s Hill was so named because Samuel Brown’s blacksmith’s shop was located at the bottom of it.

With the arrival of tourists in the early 1900s, streets which had remained thus far un-named were duly christened with monikers invoking their past residents. Barber’s Alley pays homage to Joseph Rainey, a free black American who set up shop in town during the American Civil War. He later went on to become one of the first black Americans voted into the U.S. House of Representatives. Printer’s Alley is the home of Stockdale House, where the publisher of Bermuda’s first newspaper lived. Major Norman Walker, the Confederate shipping agent who oversaw the interests of the South from 1891 to 1895, lived on Blockade Alley.

Church Lane runs behind St. Peter’s Church, the oldest Anglican Church outside of Great Britain in continuous use. Church Folly Lane takes you to the Unfinished Church, grand remains of a house of worship whose construction began in 1874 and was never completed. A nearby farming district exported so many turkeys that its local road was titled Turkey Hill.

One fact remains true of all of the streets of St. George — they are difficult to drive around! The town has a complicated system of one way streets for a simple reason: The streets of today were the footpaths of the first settlers who arrived in 1612 on board the Plough.

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