Tim sorts Brighton's North Laine from The Lanes (From The Argus)
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Tim sorts Brighton's North Laine from The Lanes
9:59am Friday 1st February 2013 in News
Tim Price with his guide to Brighton inside the shop window
A shop owner is so frustrated about people confusing North Laine and The Lanes he has decided to educate the world.
Tim Price, who owns JuJu in Gloucester Road, said he was “driven nuts” by people saying his shop was in the Lanes.
It is, of course, in North Laine and so he has put a sign in his shop window explaining the difference.
Mr Price said: “It drives me nuts every time they say they are in The Lanes walking past my shop.
“I hear it constantly.
“I decided I had to get it out of my system.”
And having put up the sign so passers-by can see it, he said the response has been brilliant.
He added: “I have even had historians come in to say well done.
“So many people are reading the sign and saying it is brilliant and they did not know that.
“It has been an overwhelming response which I really did not expect.
“I am so glad I did it.”
The sign reads:
Did you know...
you are not in The Lanes.
You are not even in The North Lanes or The North Laines, You are in The North Laine.
It's singular because laine is, infact, an old word relating to what was once the north field hereabouts.
Nothing to do with lanes, see.
Oh, and by the way, there is no South Lanes,
it's simply The Lanes
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Comments(30)
Crystal Ball
says...
10:48am Fri 1 Feb 13
robsinden
says...
10:54am Fri 1 Feb 13
jamus77 wrote:You're correct! Whilst I appreciate his effort, it's "North Laine", not "The North Laine". Who's going to tell him?
I would argue his sign is WRONG. It is not THE North Laine, simply North Laine.
billy goat-gruff
says...
11:38am Fri 1 Feb 13
banargustrolls
says...
11:42am Fri 1 Feb 13
DUH..
ShorehamBeachcomber
says...
11:56am Fri 1 Feb 13
Delete, delete
Lady Smith
says...
12:39pm Fri 1 Feb 13
668 The neighbour of the beast
says...
1:01pm Fri 1 Feb 13
RickH
says...
1:18pm Fri 1 Feb 13
wippasnapper
says...
1:26pm Fri 1 Feb 13
To me the lain’s have always been the Victorian lain’s where no car/truck can drive down but if the green party had there way every street and road in B&H would become a car free zone therefore a lain but how gives a dam what people think as long as you are making money from them.
lakeyboy
says...
1:46pm Fri 1 Feb 13
Athena
says...
3:16pm Fri 1 Feb 13
Crystal Ball wrote:He's neither patronising nor an oaf. Just someone who's interested in local history and wants people to learn a little about it.
Patronising oaf.
Athena
says...
3:17pm Fri 1 Feb 13
668 The neighbour of the beast wrote:There is no North Lane or South Lanes. That's the point.
As long as The North and South Lanes shops aren't affected by all this then I don't mind.
Athena
says...
3:32pm Fri 1 Feb 13
wippasnapper wrote:The Lanes of Brighton are famous the world over. They are not Victorian, but are what is left of the old medieval part of Brighton. They are too narrow for cars and they are called lanes because they are little roads or alleyways. They are not lain's.
Problem is most people moving to Brighton seem to think it is part of the lain’s
To me the lain’s have always been the Victorian lain’s where no car/truck can drive down but if the green party had there way every street and road in B&H would become a car free zone therefore a lain but how gives a dam what people think as long as you are making money from them.
A laine is an old Sussex word for field. (Note the extra "i" in the spelling.) There used to be several laines in Brighton before the Victorian development: North Laine; West Laine; East Laine; Little Laine and Hilly Laine. Only North Laine kept its name, and it is the Victorian area just south-east of Brighton Station. It is a quite different area to the ancient medieval part of Brighton.
jgmd
says...
3:38pm Fri 1 Feb 13
Tim's right to correct it, but his correction is wrong, but anyway...
(A colleague told me once that his brother and sister-in-law had just split up. Her last words were "And another thing, you're so pedanticist!". To which of course he replied "Don't you mean ...")
Athena
says...
3:41pm Fri 1 Feb 13
jgmd wrote:But it's nothing to do with pedantry. It's to do with facts and history. It's like calling the Clock Tower an alarm clock, just because it's some kind of timepiece.
Some people are so pedanticist.
Tim's right to correct it, but his correction is wrong, but anyway...
(A colleague told me once that his brother and sister-in-law had just split up. Her last words were "And another thing, you're so pedanticist!". To which of course he replied "Don't you mean ...")
668 The neighbour of the beast
says...
3:53pm Fri 1 Feb 13
Athena wrote:Thanks Athena
668 The neighbour of the beast wrote:There is no North Lane or South Lanes. That's the point.
As long as The North and South Lanes shops aren't affected by all this then I don't mind.
So, hang on, the north and south lanes are now collectively called 'the point'?
It could all get very confusing. Do people want to change the spelling to Laine? Good idea.
We did this sort of thing in the war to confuse German spies and in case of invasion.
Are people really that worried about Bulgarians? Let's just make a decision and stick to it. I'm with you Athena, the Point it shall be from now on.
Just to be sure are the lanes now to be known as 'The Point' or just 'Point'?
We don't want to add to any confusion...
jgmd
says...
4:41pm Fri 1 Feb 13
Isn't it obvious, surely it's 'North Point' and 'The Ponts'?
rolivan
says...
4:49pm Fri 1 Feb 13
Athena
says...
4:53pm Fri 1 Feb 13
668 The neighbour of the beast wrote:Well, jokes apart, I think you have managed to do just that.
Athena wrote:Thanks Athena
668 The neighbour of the beast wrote:There is no North Lane or South Lanes. That's the point.
As long as The North and South Lanes shops aren't affected by all this then I don't mind.
So, hang on, the north and south lanes are now collectively called 'the point'?
It could all get very confusing. Do people want to change the spelling to Laine? Good idea.
We did this sort of thing in the war to confuse German spies and in case of invasion.
Are people really that worried about Bulgarians? Let's just make a decision and stick to it. I'm with you Athena, the Point it shall be from now on.
Just to be sure are the lanes now to be known as 'The Point' or just 'Point'?
We don't want to add to any confusion...
jgmd
says...
5:02pm Fri 1 Feb 13
Skaville
says...
5:05pm Fri 1 Feb 13
Ha ha - Nice one Tim!
terrace cred.
says...
5:51pm Fri 1 Feb 13
GraemeDavis
says...
5:59pm Fri 1 Feb 13
The old field system which continued in Brighton until later than most areas divided fields into long, thin strips called lanes. When a plural is implicit English can use a singular form, as a six foot tall man or a twenty year old woman. This is particularly common in southern dialects. The singular form North Lane reflects this process (and as set out above there should be no The).
Laine for Lane is a spelling variant. It certainly was used in a very few early sources for Brighton and so is recorded in the longest version of the Oxford English Dictionary. It is however of the nature of a spelling mistake. Curiously there are some fanciful definitions out there suggesting laine means loan or lease - these are just not correct. The word is lane. Brighton gets the spelling right in The Lanes.
Laine was not used in Victorian Brighton but rather was "revived" in the twentieth century. The spelling now has a couple of generations of usage behind it, though there are still people alive who remember a time before the name North Laine was used. I think it is a shame that the council didn't go for the correct "North Lane", preserving the interesting singular but avoiding ye olde English coffee shopee style of spelling.
Athena
says...
6:13pm Fri 1 Feb 13
GraemeDavis wrote:There is a map of Brighton dated 1792 showing all the different laines (that spelling). So it is not a 20th century revival and it is a quite separate word to lane, which has a different etymology. It is nothing to do with singular or plural, but one "laine" comprised many fields.
This one comes up every so often. There are two separate linguistic processes.
The old field system which continued in Brighton until later than most areas divided fields into long, thin strips called lanes. When a plural is implicit English can use a singular form, as a six foot tall man or a twenty year old woman. This is particularly common in southern dialects. The singular form North Lane reflects this process (and as set out above there should be no The).
Laine for Lane is a spelling variant. It certainly was used in a very few early sources for Brighton and so is recorded in the longest version of the Oxford English Dictionary. It is however of the nature of a spelling mistake. Curiously there are some fanciful definitions out there suggesting laine means loan or lease - these are just not correct. The word is lane. Brighton gets the spelling right in The Lanes.
Laine was not used in Victorian Brighton but rather was "revived" in the twentieth century. The spelling now has a couple of generations of usage behind it, though there are still people alive who remember a time before the name North Laine was used. I think it is a shame that the council didn't go for the correct "North Lane", preserving the interesting singular but avoiding ye olde English coffee shopee style of spelling.
GraemeDavis
says...
10:33pm Fri 1 Feb 13
Athena wrote:Yes I'm aware of the map and a couple of other sources which use this spelling variant. My point is that there was no earlier tradition of this spelling nor was it used in the Victorian age. It was "revived" at a twentieth century council meeting.
GraemeDavis wrote:There is a map of Brighton dated 1792 showing all the different laines (that spelling). So it is not a 20th century revival and it is a quite separate word to lane, which has a different etymology. It is nothing to do with singular or plural, but one "laine" comprised many fields.
This one comes up every so often. There are two separate linguistic processes.
The old field system which continued in Brighton until later than most areas divided fields into long, thin strips called lanes. When a plural is implicit English can use a singular form, as a six foot tall man or a twenty year old woman. This is particularly common in southern dialects. The singular form North Lane reflects this process (and as set out above there should be no The).
Laine for Lane is a spelling variant. It certainly was used in a very few early sources for Brighton and so is recorded in the longest version of the Oxford English Dictionary. It is however of the nature of a spelling mistake. Curiously there are some fanciful definitions out there suggesting laine means loan or lease - these are just not correct. The word is lane. Brighton gets the spelling right in The Lanes.
Laine was not used in Victorian Brighton but rather was "revived" in the twentieth century. The spelling now has a couple of generations of usage behind it, though there are still people alive who remember a time before the name North Laine was used. I think it is a shame that the council didn't go for the correct "North Lane", preserving the interesting singular but avoiding ye olde English coffee shopee style of spelling.
The suggestion made by several Brighton writers that "laine" is from an Anglo-Saxon word conflicts both with the known lexicon of Anglo-Saxon and the known development of Anglo-Saxon words through Middle English and into Modern English. It's a myth. Instead it's a late eighteenth century spelling mistake which was copied by a couple of related documents.
We're now all familiar with the spelling Laine and so it has become established for us. But our Victorian ancestors didn't know the form Laine, and our Georgian ancestors would have been amused that we have started using their spelling mistake. It's fine as a bit of fun, but that's all it is. There's a proper reason for the singular form but not for the spelling.
Roundbill
says...
1:12pm Sat 2 Feb 13
Jetsamandflotsam
says...
4:14pm Sat 2 Feb 13
AmboGuy
says...
4:20pm Sun 3 Feb 13
The fact that he's still got it wrong is a hot embarrassing for him though I just admit!
terrace cred.
says...
4:37pm Sun 3 Feb 13
jamus77 says...
10:37am Fri 1 Feb 13