The Corner

What Has Happened to Buttock’s Booth?

Aaaaargh!

My great pleasure as a child was to cycle around the countryside near my

home town, Northampton, in the east midlands of England. The villages had

fine old names, some of them colorful and curious: Yardley Gobion,

Bugbrooke, Chapel Brampton, Stoke Bruerne.

Well, one of those villages — it boasted the part-excavated site of a Roman

villa — was Buttock’s Booth, three or four miles out of town on the

Kettering road. Browsing on Mapquest last night, I discovered to my dismay

that Buttock’s Booth has DISAPPEARED!

Is this yet another example of Geographical Correctness? — like all those

American names with “squaw” in them being scrubbed from the maps? Or what?

I note from Google that Buttock’s Booth still shows up in bus timetables and

the like. So why doesn’t Mapquest know about it?

John Derbyshire — Mr. Derbyshire is a former contributing editor of National Review.
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