Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 19 January 1924
Street Names and a Castle
The naming of the various roads on the Council’s building estate was settled at the Council meeting held last week. The principal road is to be known as Daylands Avenue, and will serve to perpetuate the local name for the field in which the houses have been erected. This name takes us back to the time when, before the two local Enclosure Acts were passed, all the ploughland in Conisborough was a great open field undivided by hedges or walls, and was divided up into portions farmed by different persons. Conjecture would suggest that the pieces of land immediately to the west of Park Road were farmed by a person named Day, and hence the name Daylands.
Prior Road is to be so named because it was the first street laid out. The other names—Canon Road, Hameline Road, and Warren Road—are named after people intimately connected with the early history of Conisborough, the spelling being modernised.
Peter Langtoft, writing in the 13th century of events in early British history, says: “Some often wrote when the summer began. The Kyng and his meyne went to Burgh Konan. It was on Witsonday.” The King he is writing of was Egbert, the first King of England, who was being hard pressed by Danish invaders. As this Egbert died in 838 we are forced to the conclusion that as early as the first quarter of the 9th century there was here a fortress sufficiently strong to offer a refuge to a king hard pressed by his enemies. There is no doubt that Burgh Konan is Conisborough, for Langtoft states so.
The strong place was not originated by Egbert, it was there ready to his hand, how long it had been there I do not know, but in all probability it dates from British times, for Jeffrey, of Monmouth, a monk who, in the reign of King Stephen, wrote a history of the Britons, says: “Konan began a burgh; in all the world there was not such a burgh, so fair. When the burgh was made with much strength, he set on it a name after himself, and oft he rode it through and through, and named it Konan’s burgh.” He also states that the place once called Kaer-Konan was in his time called Koningsburgh.
Hameline Road will commemorate the person who is generally supposed to be responsible for the building of the Keep of our Castle. He was half-brother to King Henry II., and a great friend of King Richard, whom he accompanied to the Holy Land. He was joint treasurer of the national fund raised to ransom Richard when he was taken captive; he himself contributed £340 8s. 7d. to the fund, a large sum in those days.
Warren Road is to be named after the De Warren to whom the great fee of Conisborough was granted by William the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings. The earldom of Surrey was granted to the second Warren to own Conisborough. The Earls of Surrey figure prominently in English history, and they were lords of Conisborough as well. If further streets are to be named as the building scheme progresses, Surrey Road would be a very appropriate name for one of them.