Pennys Lane, Wilton
Pennys Lane in Wilton is probably named after somebody with the surname ‘Penny’.
It’s a reasonable common name in the Salisbury area, and I think there is, or was, a large Penny family in the Wilton and Dinton area.
Derivation of the surname ‘Penny’
My belief has always been that the surname Penny is derived from the Welsh ‘pen’, meaning ‘son of’ – the equivalent to the Scottish ‘Mac’. However, the online resources nearly all agree that the surname Penny is related to the coin.
Ancestry.com says that it is from the:
Middle English peni, peny ‘penny’ applied as a nickname, possibly for a person of some substance or for a tenant who paid a rent of one penny. 1
The Internet Surname Database says:
This interesting surname was originally a byname for a person of wealth. A penny in Anglo-Saxon and later England, when coins were few, had great purchasing power, and could well be applied to people of substance. 2
Behind the Name just says:
Means “penny (the coin)” from the Old English pening, penig.3
Ancestor Search, on the other hand, quoting Arthur William’s ‘An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names With an Essay on their Derivation and Import’, says ‘Penny’ means:
The top of a mountain or hill. A mountain in Spain is called by the inhabitants ‘La Penna de los Enamorados,’ or the Lover’s Rock. The word has the same meaning as the English pinnacle. 4
Penny Lane, Liverpool – an opinion
As far as I know there is no connection between any of the Salisbury Penny families and Penny Lane in Liverpool.
However, I’m going to go slightly off-topic, and add in my, um, two-penn’orth on the recent controversy over whether Penny Lane in Liverpool.
I feel somewhat justified in doing this, despite the fact that that I live in Salisbury not Liverpool, because a) I’m interested in road names and b) my surname is Penny.
The controversy over the re-naming of Penny Lane
In July 2006, a Liverpool city councillor, Barbara Mace, put forward the idea of re-naming streets which had been originally named after slave traders.
At the time, Councillor Mace wasn’t aware that ‘Penny Lane’ was connected to the slave trade. This isn’t unreasonable – I would guess that before the controversy, most people would not have known.
I’m not sure who initially connected the idea of re-naming Liverpool streets to James Penny and to Penny Lane, but once the connection was made, it became a big news story, attracting coverage both nationally5.
Subsequent to this, the suggestion that Penny Lane might be re-named was dropped. 6
My opinion, for what it’s worth
Do I think Penny Lane should be renamed?
Yes, I do.
It might be a crass thing to say, but only the holocaust really compares to slavery in it’s horror, it’s intentionality and in the way its now almost universally reviled.
There is a lot of material on the internet about the horrors of slavery which I’m not going to reproduce here. However I will just relate this, from the Encyclopedia Britannica website. The italics are mine:
So many bodies of dead or dying Africans were jettisoned into the ocean that sharks regularly followed the slave ships on their westward journey.
James Penny was a prolific slave trader.
According to the evidence he gave to a parliamentary committee on the slave trade in 1788, Mr Penny had invested in 11 voyages carrying slaves from Africa to the West Indies, each voyage carrying between 500 and 600 slaves. 7.
The Encyclopedia Britannica says that the mortality rate for slaves on the Middle Passage has been estimated at 13 percent8. If this was true of Mr Penny’s ships then he would be responsible for the deaths of around 715 entirely innocent people.
James Penny was an active campaigner against abolition
He was given a silver epergne by Liverpool Corporation for his evidence to the parliamentary committee, which included the statement that:
If the weather is sultry and there appears the least perspiration on their skins when they come upon deck, there are two men attending with cloths to rub them perfectly dry and another to give them a little cordial. 9
While it would be nice to believe that James Penny’s slaves were so well looked after, it doesn’t necessarily sit well with another statement, when he said that the slaves were accommodated below decks in a space where:
The average allowance of width to a slave is 14 and two-thirds inches.
I don’t believe that changing the name of Penny Lane would be ‘whitewashing history’ 10. Uniquely, because of the song, I don’t think that the fact that it was called Penny Lane is likely to be forgotten, and in any case, there is nothing to prevent Liverpool Council using signage that includes “formerly Penny Lane”.
I don’t believe that changing the name of Penny Lane would reduce ‘tourist interest’ 11. I enjoyed visiting Liverpool a few years back, but Penny Lane wasn’t one of the places I visited (although it’s only fair to say I’m more of an Elvis fan). In any case, firstly ‘Lennon and McCartney Lane, formerly Penny Lane’ would possibly be just as much of a draw for tourists, and, secondly according to an article published at the time of the controversy,
‘I approached Liverpool?s infamous Penny Lane half expecting be blinded by bright camera lights flashing from the cameras of those hoping to archive their visit to the lane made famous by the Beatles in 1967 with the No2 hit of the same name. Surprisingly an eerie silence greeted me, accompanied by an idle breeze that spiralled past me and worked its way down the lifeless, residential road.’
I don’t necessarily think that all roads dedicated to people connected with slavery should be re-named. I think re-naming is particularly appropriate for Penny Lane because of it’s profile, and because of his involvement in the political campaign against abolition.
To sum up, most people would probably agree that slavery is indefensible. Continuing to honour a man who was not only a prolific slave trader, but also defended slavery in the hope of perpetuating his business seems to me to be just plain ‘wrong’. To misuse a media catchphrase, it is political incorrectness gone mad.
Visiting Salisbury?
For accommodation, see the Hotels in Salisbury page.
Footnotes
- penny Family History Facts 1920 – Ancestry.com [↩]
- SurnameDB: Penny surname meaning [↩]
- Behind the Name: Search Results [↩]
- Penny Surname Origin & Family History. [↩]
- BBC NEWS | England | Merseyside | ‘Slave’ streets could be renamed, Voice Online :: WHITEWASHING SLAVE HISTORY?, Bid to wipe Penny Lane off the map | Mail Online, Sign of the times that we?re upset by street names -Times Online and internationally. For example, Denmark: Penny Lane i Liverpool får lov at beholde navnet, som The Beatles gjorde berømt. E-Pressen.dk, the Czech Republic: Penny Lane – Komentáre (Ceský rozhlas), Germany: ? wir auf Norbert Barthle warten and Mexico: Problemas de bautizo – El Siglo de Durango [↩]
- BBC NEWS | England | Merseyside | ‘Slave’ streets renaming dropped [↩]
- file:///media/USB_4G/research/penny/abolition_penny_lane_feature.shtml [↩]
- Welcome to Encyclopædia Britannica’s Guide to Black History [↩]
- http://blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/PennysLane.aspx [↩]
- From a letter, or email, to the GuardianLetters: Singing the praises of Penny Lane | From the Guardian | The Guardian [↩]
- Political Correctness Gone Mad: Part 2 [↩]
