Back Lane, NW3
Police officer apprehends a boy for picking flowers on the Heath (1894)
Credit: British Library
Back Lane runs from Heath Street to Flask Walk.

’Back’ was formerly a name frequently given to roads lying at the rear of a main thoroughfare. It dates from a period when an average village boasted only two streets: the High Road and the Back Road.

When the high road became impassably rutted or muddy, the back road often tended to replace it. As surfacing on highways improved, the mime ’Back’ came to imply ’inferior, obscure’, and almost died out as a street name, but has survived in the term ’back street’.

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