(Not so) New

I have noticed a lot of places and things called New something which are clearly *not* new and this intrigues me. I want to know how not new the ‘New’ thing is. A couple of examples:

Birmingham New Street, the home of New Street Station. Wikipedia says “New Street is first mentioned as novus vicus [meaning new village] in the surviving borough rental records of 1296, at which point it was partly built upon with burgage plots, but was also the site of most of the few open fields remaining within the borough, including Barlycroft, Stoctonesfeld and Wodegrene. It is mentioned again, this time as le Newestret in the rentals of 1344–45. The street may have been created at the time of the establishment of Birmingham’s market in 1166, as a more direct route from the centre of the new town at the Bull Ring to the home of the de Birmingham family’s feudal overlords at Dudley Castle.” The original New Street station was initially opened to passengers in 1851.

Newcastle Upon Tyne is one of my favorite cities and close to where my Grandad and his siblings were born. The first recorded settlement in what is now Newcastle was Pons Aelius (“Hadrian’s bridge”), a Roman fort and bridge across the River Tyne and was founded in the 2nd century AD. It became Novum Castellum or New Castle in 1080 when Robert Curthose son of William the Conqueror erected a wooden castle there.

What (not so) New things do you notice? Add them in the comments