Quote:
Originally Posted by jaysay
Where's Elephant Street Margaret, can't say I've ever heard of that  |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Retlaw
Elephant St was off Plantation St, its now long gone under the houses on the right as you enter Plantation St, from the Traffic light at the start of East Gate.
Legend has it that a circus elephant dropped dead in that area in the early 1800's. Never found any proof though. A lot of the original housing dated from the mid 1840's, Birtwistle St was then known as Plantation St, Pitt St, now East Gate, was John St.
Retlaw.
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John, Elephant street has been mentioned in several threads in the past, if you do a search. When I first joined I had to ask where it was and turned out I had walked past it every day on my way to and from primary school!
As for the dead elephant "legend", I copied this from a post by katex on an old thread:
Found an interesting one in a book 'An Accrington Miscellany' Frank Davy tells of:-
'It was a death that gave Elephant Street its name. In 1845 and elephant called "Chimney", purchased by Wombwell for his circus and standing 11ft 4ins. high and weighing more than 5 tons, died in Accrington. This tragedy, caused so much local interest that a street under construction was named Elephant Street to commemorate the event'