Moves to rename Clifton’s Blackboy Hill and have Bristol follow the lead of London are unlikely to get anywhere - because the road is not officially called that anyway. People in Tottenham came together earlier this week to celebrate the renaming of a street there - from Black Boy Lane to La Rose Lane after a Black poet, publisher and activist.
The move has sparked something of a backlash online, and within hours one of the new road name signs in north London had been vandalised. But there seems little prospect of Bristol’s version - the infamous Black Boy Hill at the end of Whiteladies Road - getting renamed, because there is no road called Black Boy Hill.
Research pulled together by Bristol Live in 2020, following the toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston, revealed a mixed and confusing picture regarding the name ‘Black Boy Hill’, and it’s one which could make it a challenge to actually rename the road. Because on the map, on the postal addresses and most crucially on the physical road name signs, there is no Black Boy Hill at all.
