Towersey, London
 

I'm reading a book (The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor; not that ET) and one of the characters lives in a part of London called Towersey.

I've looked it up and can only find a small town or village in Oxfordshire, but this is set in London, right along the Thames. The character living there thinks about being near the estuary, and can look down her street to see large boats and ships passing along the Thames. The area is rundown, full of warehouses, sailors' and dock workers' pubs, cranes, and all that comes with a riverside location.

The book was written in the 1950s. I can't find any reference to a part of London, or greater London, called Towersey, and I'm wondering if the name has changed. None of the other locations in the book are fictional. In fact, most are quite specific.

Does anyone know where Towersey is (or was) in London?

It's fictional, but the word gives a clue to where the author had in mind.

The suffix -ey is common along the Thames, and is derived from an Anglo-Saxon term for island. Not as in a lump of rock in the middle of a sea, but as in a patch within marshland that stayed dry more often than not.

The area the novel describes is obviously east of the Tower, and the modern local government unit for the area close to the river north of the Thames was given the name Tower Hamlets when invented in the mid-20th century. The term had been used occasionally, but very rarely since the 16th century.

It embraces parts of Hackney, Stepney, Bromley by Bow (see what I mean) and the Isle of Dogs as well as a fair number of other areas - like Limehouse, Millwall or Wapping - that have never been islands.

The author's invention is etymologically illiterate: all those -ey settlements had those names at least 300 years before the building of the Tower.

But it could be anywhere along the ten miles east of the Tower. More or less "Call the Midwife" territory.

a fictional amalgam of the Tower and Bermondsey

Very helpful. Thank you so much flanneruk and sofarsogood.

flanneruk places fictional Towersey on the north shore of the Thames. I'm going with that.

Taylor was a serious author and was considered so in the literary world during her lifetime. I'm puzzled by her use of an "etymologically illiterate" invention, but no one is perfect.

puzzled by her use of an "etymologically illiterate" invention, but no one is perfect.


Serious authors do from time to time make things up.

Well yes, of course they do. I am a Trollope fan and amateur scholar and I know that well: Barsetshire in no more real than Hogwarts.

However, as I stated in my original post, all the other place names in the book are very specific, down to streets and blocks. I'm still puzzled by this departure from the rest of the choices made by the author in this particular book, but I never doubt her seriousness. I hope you read her. She's marvelous, if you haven't.