Pic: Aidy Riggott/BBC

Reader John Smith has kindly sent me the link to a story about a street sign in Lancashire which is on the site in Euxton where the “bouncing bomb” was filled with explosive during the Second World War.

A local road in Buckshaw Village – built about 60 years after the war – was named after the engineer and designer, Barnes Wallis. However, for the second time in five years his name has been misspelled. The first, erected in 2016, named the road as “Barnes Wallace Way”, but was then replaced with one with the correct spelling, as can be seen in this Google screenshot, taken in 2018. 

It seems now that a new sign, installed on the other side of the road and seen at the top of this post, has a different misspelling, shortening the forename to “Barns”. It was spotted by local councillor Aidy Riggott. Chorley Council have told him that a new sign would be installed “as soon as possible”.

A further local curiosity: at some point when the development of the area was going on, there must have been someone in the local Street Names Choosing Department with a sense of history. Look at the examples highlighted in the Google maps screengrab below:

There are eight different Avenues, Closes, Courts and Drives given the surnames of pilots who took part in the Dams Raid – Astell, Barlow, Byers, Gibson, Hopgood, Knight, Shannon and Townsend. We don’t know for certain whether there are any misspellings of their names – let’s hope not.