It turns out that the pound isn’t the only sterling worth watching if you’re a worldly minded Brit. Sterling is also a town in Virginia, in the US, about a 45-minute drive away from Washington DC (as measured from the White House, because why not).
And while it has several claims to fame – part of Washington Dulles International Airport sits within its boundaries; former US President James Buchanan had a summer house there; it used to be one of the many US towns that explicitly only allowed whites to live there pre-1960s – it has one quirk that is most interesting from a City Monitor point of view.
London station names in your neighbourhood
In one corner of the town, between the Walmart and the centre-of-town shopping mall, is a cluster of streets named after London’s Tube stations. As in the names of the stations on the London Underground (and, indeed, Overground) network.
This residential community, in Sterling, USA (near Washington DC), has its streets named after London tube stations: https://t.co/QquYOVEhBS pic.twitter.com/fEy1szaYQS
— Oliver O'Brien (@oobr) July 26, 2017
You can turn right off Blossom Drive onto Waterloo Station Square, which has a pretty array of colourful, multi-storey, terraced houses, and then continue across the Cabin Branch brook to the intersection of Regents Park Circle and Paddington Station Terrace.
The left turn onto Regents Park Circle will then take you past Victoria Station Drive, Cheswick Park Court (as in, Chiswick Park, but they spelt it wrong), Ruislip Manor Way, Turnham Green Court, Ladbroke Grove Court and Tottenham Hale Court.
And down Paddington Station Terrace you can turn left onto Mornington Crescent Terrace, which connects up with Willesden Junction Terrace, and take a later left onto Brondesbury Park Terrace (hello, Overground, don’t quite know what you’re doing here).
Or pull into the cul-de-sac of Wembley Central Terrace for a quick, quiet, in-car cry because honestly why are these roads named after tube stations?
We would say it’s some kind of train-themed neighbourhood – there’s Livingstone Station Street, Railway Terrace, Locomotive Terrace, Conductor Terrace, and Grand Central Square all in the area – but then there’s randomly an Indian Summer Terrace just across the way from Wembley Central Terrace.
[Read more: How did London’s Tube lines get their names?]