Place name
Originally Albert Road and Albert Place when it was first laid out sometime around 1859. It was re-named Miranda Road and re-numbered by 1879, when officials took stock of the confusing number of streets named after the former prince consort. Like other nearby roads this is named after a character from one of Shakespeare’s plays, the daughter of Prospero, another of the main characters of The Tempest. She was banished to the Island along with her father at the age of three, and in the subsequent 12 years has lived with her father and their slave, Caliban, as her only company. Today, Shakespeare’s name seems almost commonplace as our admiration for the Bard as grown in the centuries since his death. But it wasn’t always the case, as late as March 27, 1866, a letter to The Times complained that many of the great figures of English history had been ignored in London’s street nomenclature. “We have one little out-of-the-way terrace called Shakespeare” (a reference to small group of houses around a pub named after the Bard in Holloway Road – now gone), Civis wrote. The letter seems to have had an effect as this is one of a small cluster of streets not far from the Holloway Road that are named after characters from Shakespeare’s plays. This road was first mentioned around 1885. Nearby streets include Prospero Road, Cressida Road, Lysander Grove and Mews, and Parolles Road.
