Lovely Names for Lost Landscapes

 

   I just did another post about the elimination of old geographic names and I will not bore you again with that subject. Instead, I will suggest that we should also be concerned about the creation of new toponymic terms. Particularly as they are applied to recently constructed housing developments.

   You may have noticed when travelling around the perimeter of London, that the natural landscape is rapidly being altered and replaced by rows of very large homes on very small lots. While they may not look attractive, they are attractively described and if you are lured by the name, you are likely to be disappointed. 

   There appear to be no truth in advertising regulations about names which are deceptive, so I will offer a few suggestions here. If the name sounds old and has the word "Mews" in it, it is brand new. Often the description is about things which don't exist on the sites, or conveys notions about what the place is not. "Rolling Meadows" is likely to be flat and not green. If trees are mentioned there will be none and do be especially wary of those that offer groves of chestnuts. Avoid descriptive phrasing that uses "At", as in "The Sanctuary at Sydenham Canyons" or "The Preserves at Port Stanley." An "Andover Trails" will have few and none that are not concrete and if the brochure uses the word "Trace" for "Trails", surely there will be no place to hike. 

Fancy Names for Bland Developments is Not a New Development

   In the early part of the last century one finds examples of entrepreneurial developers who were guilty of real estate hyperbole and in this quote you will learn that I am not the first to make fun of it.

"I had not been long in the Northwest before I discovered it to have elegancies. It first astonished and then mildly amused me to run across, among the stumps still standing on logged-off land, a hunt club, complete with red coats, masters of the hounds, and considerable view halloo….
The Northwest was spotted here and there with elegancies other than hunt clubs. I suppose all new countries go through like labors. Kensington Manors were appearing suddenly where one might yet hear the melancholy cadences of the owl. Out of the newly drained swamps, as one watched, sprang Mayfairs, Windermeres, Highland Moors. A small convivial party of newspaper reporters once devoted an entire evening to conjuring up the most preposterous names possible for one of these raw new subdivisions. We finally settled on Buckinghamshire Mews."

The Source: 
   Far Corner: A Personal View of the Pacific Northwest Including Certain Places No Longer Found, Stewart Holbook.

The Bonus:
  What the hell is a "view halloo"? ---"a shout given by a hunter on seeing a fox break cover."