Shakespeare and Shelley

Shelley Road is probably named after the poet Percy Shelley. Although there are no other roads named after poets other than Shakespeare
represented in this area, all the other roads are themed around Shakespeare
. It doesn’t seem too great a jump from Shakespeare
to another famous English poet, Shelley.

England in 1819

Shelley wrote this poem in 1819, referring to King George III, his son the Prince Regent and the Peterloo massacre.

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,–
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,–
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,–
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,–
An army which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,–
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,–
A Senate–Time’s worst statute unrepealed,–
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.

Mary Shelly, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecroft

Shelley Drive could also be commemorating Mary Shelley, Percy’s wife. Mary Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist and author of ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’, and William Godwin, the anarchist thinker.

Coincidentally, (but possibly not very interestingly), Godwin wrote a biography of William Pitt (the Elder) who is the origin of Chatham Close which is just over the main road from the Shelley Drive estate.

Mary Shelly and Frankenstein

Apart from having interesting parents and and an interesting husband, Mary Shelley was a successful writer herself – following a famous house party with her husband, Lord Byron and Sheridan Le Fanu, she wrote the story of ‘Frankenstein’.