Atlanta's Sunday paper, the AJC, picked up and printed an article by Sarah Lyall in the New York Times. The title of the article was "Crapstone, now that's a name." It's all about some perverse sense of humor that Brit's have over places given bawdy names. There is, apparently, a village in Devon named "Crapstone". Crapstone is a one-shop village in which Stewart Pierce, 61 lives and endures. He is frequently called and asked to repeat the name of his village. When doing so, the caller, and often his co-workers, burst out in laughter. Sometimes they add, "Oh, we thought it didn't really exist".
There are others of course. Ugley, East Breast, North Piddle and, Spanker Lane, if you're interested, is in Derbyshire. There's also Pratts Bottom in Kent. A "Prat" being slang for a buffoon and bottom, you know, is one's buttocks. Streets are a favorite target as well of Brits who love double-entendres and this is a time-honored tradition in the UK. Hoare Road gets guffaws as does Gaswork Road.
Ed Hurst and Rob Bailey have co-authored "Rude Britain" and "Rude UK", which list these offensive place names. Hurst stated in an interview that "Place names and street names are full of history and culture and it's only because language has evolved over the centuries that they've wound up sounding rude". Bailey and Hurst got the idea for the books when they read about a couple who bought a house on Butt Hole Road, in South Yorkshire.
Being fair, the name most likely "has to do with the spot's historic function as a source of water, a water butt being a container for collecting water. But it proved to be prohibitively hilarious".
"If they ordered a pizza, the pizza company wouldn't deliver it because they thought it was a made-up name," Hurst said.
The couple moved away.
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