A significant number of the street names of the post-war Efford estate derive from English River names and Dove Gardens is no exception. Indeed it is named after the Derbyshire stream that rise on the slopes of Axe Edge and runs southwards for some forty five miles before joining the River Trent. A good walker’s river it is possible to follow the waterway along the first twenty miles of its path, taking in some stunning scenery along the way. It is a little like the Tamar in that for much of its course it has one bank in one county and the other in another – Derbyshire and Staffordshire respectively. However it is somewhat less spectacular in its size and there are a number of crossings made up of just a single stone slab. Beresford Dale and Dovedale are found along its course, the former being associated with Izaac Walton and his friend Charles Cotton and the seventeenth century literary classic The Compleat Angler, written by the former with a chapter by the latter on fly-fishing.
The name Dove itself, incidentally comes from the ancient British dubo-meaning black or dark.
