Five Roads by Nigel Roth

We’re going to take a short drive.

From my house, let's head up Edwards Street, past the big corner house, The Beeches, now used to house old folk and their teeth, and left along South Street, which miraculously, and very Englishly, becomes Newmarket, after the junction.

A few miles along, past the old area of Kenwick, we'll head east at the roundabout and onto the Manby Road towards that very town.

Manby, named, as were many of the villages in the Lincolnshire Wolds, for the Viking who settled his farm there, is known for absolutely nothing. It’s so ordinary that it had to adjoin with the neighboring village, Grimoldby, to add an Italian restaurant and two village shops to its name, none of which I’ve ever visited.

It does, though, have one curious feature.

Towards the end of the Manby Road, which by now has transformed again, this time into the Manby Middlegate, we’ll take a right on the Carlton Road, and make our way past the post office to a road on the left and a sign revealing its tributaries within that small enclave.

There are five roads, and they tell a story.

The first of these is Valiant Road, and I wondered how it became named so.

Now, I know the accepted meaning, courageous and very determined, but valiant actually derives from the Middle English word for robust, or well-built, so the houses along this particular street are more likely to be constructed to last than ready fo