People who have wondered why their road is called what it is can find out in a book on the origins of Coventry street names.

More than 700 road names are explained in the volume complied by former Local Studies worker Margaret Smedley of Coventry Central Library.

She started her odyssey of research when a library visitor asked the meaning of a street name. After some research she managed to track down the record detailing why the road was named as it was, and in doing so began a collection of the city’s names.

Mrs Smedley spent hours of her spare time burrowing through the records to try and bring all the information together. Seven years later, the file of information she kept to answer queries has been published by the city council.

She said:

“The information was there, but it wasn’t in one place.”

More than 25 sources were used to verify the information in the book, with old council committee papers forming the main bulk of the work.

Mrs Smedley said the trail started to dry up when the lists of names to be approved was made purely alphabetical, instead of being produced by theme.

She said:

“This makes it hard to be sure what the name means. In some cases people have told me, but I had no evidence.”

One example is Bush Close, which could be named after a tree or shrub, but was in fact named after composer Alan Dudley Bush.

Mrs Smedley said she has plenty more names that could feature in another volume if this book proves a hit, but added that her long-term ambition is to edit the two-volume diaries of an entertaining Coventry magistrate.