As unexpected street names go, this is right up there.
And there are ten more where that came from.
We're not in London we're in Kent, on a housing estate in Dartford not far from the QE2 Bridge. We're in Dartford because that's where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards grew up, met and went on to form the Rolling Stones. And we're here because when the time came to pick street names somebody thought 'Why don't we name them after Rolling Stones records?' Hence more of this kind of thing.
The estate in question is called The Bridge, and lies to the north of the town centre on a large brownfield site backing onto Dartford Marshes. Originally this was the site of Joyce Green Hospital, a massive Edwardian institution built to confine smallpox sufferers far away from human habitation. After WW2 it became more community-focused and thus did Not Fade Away. But the opening of Darent Valley Hospital in 2000 caused services to be wound down for The Last Time, and complete demolition of the site means It's All Over Now. None of those three Rolling Stones tracks made the cut for subsequent street names, alas, but You Can't Always Get What You Want.
A former isolation hospital isn't normally the optimal location for a new community, but most people in Kent have cars so are very happy to live near a dual carriageway with excellent connections to Bluewater, the M25 and a Thames crossing. For cyclists and pedestrians it's just over a mile to Dartford town centre, and if you pick your route carefully you can pass the end of Spielman Road where Keith Richards grew up. But what planners really hoped you'll do is take the Fastrack, the segregated bus route that'll swiftly whizz you to the station, the shops or some nearby logistics-friendly workplace. Bussing out, by deliberate design, is a lot more direct than attempting to drive.
The estate was built in stages, each a separate residential wedge and each with a different rationale for naming its streets. Those in the first phase all got named after doctors and nurses who worked at the original hospital, or (in one case) aboard the hospital ships that previously moored in the estuary. The second phase had an engineering bent, for example Vickers Lane and Vimy Drive which both commemorate the Vickers Vimy bomber which made its maiden flight from RAF Joyce Green in 1917. But for the third phase the housing developers suggested something more unusual, naming the spine road after the local world famous rock group and the adjacent spurs after some of their biggest hits. Dartford council leapt at the idea and that's how Stones Avenue was born.
It's only a short walk from the bus stop by the Nisa supermarket, but this requires crossing a narrow green strip which doubles up as a scrubby residential buffer. The houses on the far side are compact but often with a third storey to make up for it, i.e. typically post-millennial, and many face directly onto a path with a parking space provided nearby. Front gardens plainly weren't deemed a necessity, hence most homes are blessed with little more than a stripe of gravel, loose slate or low shrubbery. It all feels pretty quiet, at least when the kids are in school and the estate's gardening squad isn't busy mowing the interstitials. But nothing quite prepares you for the street signs, the world of '60s and '70s pop writ large in a municipal typeface, like someone ran their finger down the Guinness Book of Hit Singles and thought hell yes, let's use that.
Tumbling Dice Mews is probably the weirdest, a Top 5 single from Exile on Main St which references a philandering gambler. Sympathy Vale is pretty odd too, although a lot better than the full Sympathy For The Devil Vale might have been. Rainbow Gardens sounds meteorological, as does Cloud Close, but musically speaking they follows She's A.... and Hey You Get Off Of My... respectively. Angie Mews and Lady Jane Place look the most mainstream, although some reckon at least one of those names is a codename for marijuana. Ruby Tuesday Drive was always a better bet than its alternative A side, Let's Spend the Night Together. Silver Train Gardens is actually a reference to a song about prostitutes, and imagine moving into Rambler Lane only to discover that your street commemorates the Boston Strangler. You wouldn't have got any of this dark nuance with the Beatles.
I'd been expecting to find all of the aforementioned street names because they're all on Open Street Map, but Little Red Walk came as a surprise. It's only six houses long, faces off against the community campus and originally looked like it ought to be part of Lady Jane Place. Good grief, I thought, who scans down a list of Rolling Stones records and chops off the Rooster in favour of the Little Red? It's still better than Honky Tonk Mews, Sticky Fingers Road or Nervous Breakdown Avenue might have been, although I do question the inexplicable absence of a Satisfaction Street. I apologise to the owner of number 1 Little Red Walk for zooming in on their kitchen blind when taking my photo.
But all credit to the estate's developers, specifically Jason Stokes the sales and marketing manager for Taylor Wimpey's south east region, for having the nerve to name an entire tranche of streets after local icons of popular culture. A musical slant is hugely more interesting than the usual tedious fallback of picking the names of trees, flowers, towns, girls' names or distant battlefields. Imagine the smiles if swathes of newbuild Acton were named after songs by The Who, streets in Catford after Status Quo or chunks of Watford after Wham! And in Dartford's case, because these choices actually enticed me to visit, I can bring you this exclusive Rolling Stones discography based entirely on local street names.
If you can't be bothered to hike out the edge of Dartford to see somesignage, rest assured you can always enjoy two new bronze statues of Mick and Keith in the centre of town instead.
