John Rowland wrote:

Tristán White wrote:
What do you think of the petition by Brick Lane residents and shop and
restaurant owners to get Aldgate East renamed "Brick Lane" to boost
the area.

I hope they don't get their way. The station isn't in Brick lane, or very
near it.

At the junction of St Helens Gardens and Oxford Gardens there is a sign
saying...

--- Latimer Road Station
Latimer Road ------

... or something similar. To me, this is a clear indication that Latimer
Road station needs to be renamed. If Aldgate East station was renamed to
Brick Lane, we would then need signs telling people that Brick Lane is this
way, but Brick Lane Station is that way.

The station be named Latimer Road for in the days of yore the south end
of Latimer Road was approximately where Freston Road be now, and I
believe the station may have been on the other side of Bramley Road,
though of that I cannot be sure.

The reconfiguration of the roads in that there area twas presumably a
result of the coming of the Westway, possibly with some prior 'help'
from the Luftwaffe.


Aldgate East station is in Whitechapel High Street. It should probably be
called Whitechapel, and Whitechapel should be called something else!

There's no convention in this country that says stations must be named
after the roads there on. Aldgate East is in the vicinity of Aldgate,
so I don't really buy that argument.

I can see a multitude of arguments for renaming many, many stations,
given that the names they were originally given were often somewhat
misleading. However renaming stations would be opening a real can of
worms, which is I'm sure one good reason why any such renamings are
rare. Plus once you've let the genie out of the bottle then everyone
would be knocking on the door of LU (or whoever's in charge of National
Rail station names) pestering them to change it for x,y or z worthy or
not-so-worthy reason. Yes I know Shepherd's Bush is having a name
change - but that's a change that pretty much everyone can agree on.

All that said, I'd go along with Latimer Road station as a prime
candidate for renaming, given the disappearance of the southern-end of
Latimer Road!

Additionally I've no objection to the use of "for" in station names -
"Aldgate East for Brick Lane" perhaps, though I'm sure Whitechapel Art
Gallery would want in on that too! (Many heading for the art gallery
head to Whitechapel station.) Of course using "for" naming is only so
helpful as it's impractical to include these subtitle names on maps
and/or line diagrams - though "Cutty Sark for Maritime Greenwich" has
managed to get a full namecheck on both the Tube map and the (ATOC
produced) London Connections map.