Place Name
Previously Buckingham Street. The new name comes from Boadicea or Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni. According to a tradition, strongly disputed by many archaeologists, the last and desperate stand taken in AD61 by her forces against the successful legions of the Romans under Suetonius Paulinus took place on the site of King’s Cross (Battle Bridge) and the vicinity of the former Boxworth and Sheen Groves. The Agricola of Tacitus describes it as being held on a sandy plain. It has been suggested that the queen herself was buried under King’s Cross Station. The road was originally laid out in 1845 as Buckingham Street. But its name was one of many changed in 1937 by the London County Council as it sought to tidy up the city’s street names, reduce duplication. Some of the changes however were met with dismay at the time by local residents and historians. In a letter to The Sunday Times published in November of that year, Miss E Jeffries Davis, a reader in London history at the University of London, wrote: “The alteration of ‘Buckingham’ to ‘Lower Boadicea’ Street N., shows that the LCC (in spite of its drastic dealings with various pleasant names beginning with ‘Little’) has no insuperable objection to length. But why Boadicea? That bit of misplaced history… suggests a romantic tendency at County Hall which might well find an outlet in more regard for old names, authentic history and local tradition.” Clearly they paid some attention as both Lower and North were never adopted.
