On of the inner-city’s newer thoroughfares is the wide road, created between ten and twenty years ago, that runs up to Hoe Road from Notte Street. The road runs parallel to both Hoe Street and Hoegate Street and I seem to recall that just before it came into use there was an open invitation for suggestions for possible names for the then newly-created route.
Apparently there was either little response, or little inspiration, for the name chosen was ‘Hoe Approach Road’, which, although undeniably ‘does what it says on the tin’, is hardly the most imaginative of offerings.
In its defence however is the fact that while both Hoe Street and Hoegate Street did, formerly, both run from Notte Street to the Hoe, neither of them make that direct link today.
Meanwhile for the benefit of anyone who missed earlier explanations, the word Hoe comes to us from the Old English ‘hoh’ meaning, in this context, a high ridge of land.
