Place Name
Recalls the former name of the local area of Starveall Bridge, in Yiewsley, a crossing over the Grand Union Canal. Its name came from the nearby Starveall – later Starvhall – Farm, a derogatory term – or at least a very grim joke – meaning infertile land. Infertile it may have been but it wasn’t entirely unproductive, maps from around 1900 show that the clay was used for brick making. By 1911 the hamlet of Starveall was growing, but the name was upsetting some incomers – namely the Directors of Broad and Co., Ltd, the brick makers who had bought Starveall Farm. The following year they announced they would be changing the name to Stockley, thought to be a portmanteau word derived from Cowley stock, the generic name given to the locally produced brick in West Middlesex. Yiewsley Urban District took umbrage with this unilateral renaming of the area but at a meeting the following year agreed that the new name could stay not least because as the vice-Chairman of the council Mr T. Hancock stated “‘he saw no reason why the name should not be altered. Starveall was not a correct name, for nobody had been starved there.’ (Laughter)”.
