Bow Street, Ceredigion

The earliest attestation of the name 'Bow Street' yet found is in the parish registers of Llanbadarn Fawr, where there is a baptism entry dated 9 February 1777 for a "Wm son of Jenkin & Ann Thomas, Bow Street".[3]

It would appear that the name is derived from the London street of the same name, and that its application to the small cluster of houses that would become Bow Street was connected with the turnpiking of the main Aberystwyth to Machynlleth turnpike road from 1770 onwards.[4] It may be that the choice of name was influenced by the fact that the road does actually bend slightly at this point, and might therefore have been analogous to the ‘bow’ of the London Bow Street. There are two small lanes in the village which are also known locally by English names, these being Cock and Hen Street and Thread Needle Street (sometimes Thread and Needle Street),.[5] Supposed traditions associating the name Bow Street with a local magistrate do not appear to stand up to scrutiny, and probably developed later as a way of justifying the existence of an English place name in a predominantly Welsh-speaking area.[6]

In his seminal work on Cardiganshire placenames, Iwan Wmffre suggests that an earlier name for Bow Street may have been Rhyd-y-castell (ford of the castle).[7] But the ford of Rhyd-y-castell was actually located on the small lane called Cock and Hen Street, that runs alongside the Welsh Black (formerly the Black Lion) and leads towards Clarach and Llangorwen, and not on the main Aberystwyth to Machynlleth road where the first houses in Bow Street were built.[8] Though there is no officially sanctioned Welsh equivalent to Bow Street, the author and novelist Tom Macdonald, who spent part of his childhood here, recounted that "old folk told me it was once called Nant-y-Fallen".[9] The small stream still called Nant Afallen runs under the main road a little to the north of where the original hamlet of Bow Street first grew up, and was applied to the row of small cottages that once stood nearby. The name Nantyfallen was also later extended to refer to those cottages running up the slope from the brook towards Cross Street. Occasionally in Welsh writing the name Bow Street is spelt as Bwstryd.[10]