Cecil Rhodes House. Photo: Simon Lamrock

• WHAT a missed opportunity the renaming of Cecil Rhodes House was! (New name chosen for Cecil Rhodes House, March 18).

Street and building names let us punctuate our areas with historical prompts or point to what has become obscured over time or hidden by change – and should not be used to restate the glaringly obvious.

We could have acknowledged Rhodes’s nemesis who lived very nearby, Pan-Africanist George Padmore, or Mary Shelley, Somers Towner and author of Frankenstein, who clung to her mother’s tomb in the graveyard opposite.

We had an opportunity to remember the Cinder Hills or the Pleasure Spa that were close to this location before the railway came, or to point to the hidden River Fleet that runs below.

Instead we get something rather bland and placeless. Imagination suffers a setback.

ESTHER LESLIE
Crowndale Road, NW1