I remember when I lived on the end of that road, driving down for a period of time it was blocked off for whatever reason. And the sign read ha ha road closed. I’d chuckle every time I saw it.
Reminds me of the deli in a (now-defunct) supermarket in my hometown. They sold a variety of products made by a company called Land-o'-Lakes, which led to one of the items in the display case being identified with a handwritten sign reading "LOL AMERICAN CHEESE".
That red telephone at the beginning is a rare K2 (kiosk number 2)- similar but much larger (and older) and of a slightly different design than the more common K6 usually seen in the wild (or associated with britishness). Fascinating to see one still in public. Most people wouldn't know the difference until they searched for a photo of the two side-by-side (a good comparison photo is on the wikipedia page for "red telephone box")
This is EXACTLY the kind of comment I'd expect to find under a Tim Traveller video. I am very satisfied to be given yet more polite directions to niche trivia.
According to some french dictionnary (and referenced in french Wikipedia), the word "Ha-Ha" may come from Louis XIV's son, who was forbiden by its nurse to go near the "saut-de-loup" (the original word), then seeing that it is not very dangerous said "Ha-ha, this is such a little thing that have to make me affraid?". Then everybody used the word "ha-ha". You know, in France, we have not understand yet the sense of humor and this little story may have been one of the funniest thing for us at the time...
Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! is a pleasant little town. I went there a few years ago, just for the sheer hell of it. They have an astronomical observatory and, as is common in French Canada, a colossal stone church that looks like it could easily seat everyone in town and probably the surrounding villages as well. According to the municipal website, the precise etymology of the town's name is unknown, but probably shares a common ancestor (the old French exclamation of surprise) with the ha-ha rather than having anything to do with the landscape feature directly. The town goverrnment's best guess is that it's so called because trappers and the like in the 1600s were routinely surprised to run across it, nestled as it is in what is still basically the middle of nowhere. As an aside, not too far away on the bank of the St. Lawrence is a town called Trois-Pistoles, which, a bit disappointingly, refers to an archaic bit of French coinage.
only tangentially related, but Charles Borromeo actually recommends that a parish church be able to contain four times (i think) the size of the usual congregation, to accomodate everyone visiting during patronal feast days and so on
To be fair...most English-speakers haven't heard of this expression either! But yes we Brits do conserve some other Old French expressions, like cul-de-sac :)
@@TheTimTraveller Haha might nowadays be referring to that ditch wall like you said in the video, but in old french its just a name given to any unexpected obstacles. In Quebec we also have the Ha! Ha! river, the Ha! Ha! bay, the Ha! Ha! lake and the small Ha! Ha! lake. In the case of Saint-Louis-du Ha! Ha! the haha was designating a long portage section for travellers from the Temiscouata lake and the St-Laurent river, because people traveled by canoe at that time and the lake was the end of the rivers road that took travellers from Acadia to Canada.
0:16 The parabolic arc in the metalwork is a nice touch. For those who don't know, it's the mathematical shape for the path taken by a cannonball (or other projectile) under gravity.
I live in Ottawa Ontario Canada, and my wife and her family are from New Brunswick. Every year we drive out East to visit my wife's family and we always see the sign to Saint-Louise-du-Ha! Ha! in Quebec, and always wondered why it was called that. Such an odd way of discovering the meaning!! Thank you for your absolutely brilliant videos on obscure topics!
Haha, in Switzerland the baracks are not that advanced: in my recruit school there were sheep (fenced off) in one part of the area. However, sometimes a sheep broke out, wandering arond the territory. Sometimes the entire herd walked over the main square. So in conclusion: whilst lacking a ha ha, it was still pretty funny.
'Butts' are firing butts - Bales of hay with targets on - where archers practiced as part of their lordships dues to the King (to raise men for war in return for royal favour ) there are many Butts up and down the country.
In German, these kinds of trenches are called AHA-Graben. Aha is meant as the exclamation of (sudden) acknowledgement/insight. As far as I know, we don't have any streets named after these structures. It's probably too close to humor to have a street named like this.
Cheers! I had to scrap the first two or three takes, mostly because I had a natural reflex to look at where the ditch was before "accidentally" falling into it...
Thanks Tim. I use to work for BT and sometimes I'd work in the Woolwich area and often wondered about HA, HA Street. Well now I can stop wondering. Ps love your films.
Hope you got permission! I studied at Thames Poly and a friend wanted to see the area I was in. So went round taking photos with another friend. Less than 5 minutes later police screeched up demanding to know what we were doing. Barely said a word to me but asked my friend (from Plymouth with a VERY broad accent) if he had any Irish in him.... he was... disgruntled!
You're not going to win an Oscar for those final 10 seconds. But thanks for creating yet another very interesting video. You deserve a few million subscribers. I just became one of them.
A Haha is a well known landscaping element -- from Wikipedia "A ha-ha is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond." Its not much use to suburban gardeners, you really need a stately home with a park that has a deer herd; the haha would be used to keep the deer out of the formal gardens by the house.
Theory: The term comes from French, where it is pronounced Ah-Ah. At least in Germany, that's also what little kids say when they mean poop, both the substance and the act of.. eh... jettisoning it, which seems like a perfectly feasible misuse of these ha-has. And after all, it's right next *arse*nal, what more evidence do you need?
I like your videos and sense of humour. Coming from Canada, I always wondered about St Louis du Ha! Ha! Finally I have an idea of it's name. Thanks mate.
Thank you for the smiles! And here in the US, thats golden! 'Appreciate your hard work! You should be hired by the British Tourism board...or at least the National Railway!
Oh? An unexpected, or rather very expected, Discworld Reference! "The Hoho. A cunningly designed ditch like a Haha, only the Hoho is 50 feet deep. Has claimed three Palace gardeners. Also once trapped Dr. Cruces, then head of the Assassins' Guild."
@@derauditor5748 You'd think the Ramkins would have it filled in after the first gardener fell to their death. I think that says a lot about Lady Sybil's ancestors. (Which was probably the point Pratchett was trying to make.)
@@BrokenCurtain The Hoho is in the Palace, not the Ramkin house on Scoone Avenue. It's Vetinari's character you must consider here. I imagine that the Hoho amuses him.
I've just started watching your videos during the quarantine and they're amazing! Love how you explain the terms in an enjoyable way. Can't wait for more of your videos after they release the travel ban. Greetings from Indonesia, hope you can soon cover the southern hemisphere of the word too! Cheers! 🍻
I did some work on the 2012 Olympic Shooting Venue which was located either side of Ha Ha Road. On my first visit a taxi driver explained the derivation of the name.
Hey Tim Traveller just discovered your RU-vid videos and having watched about half a dozen I can safely say I'm hooked! Your humour reminds of Jay Foreman, and love the way you deliver it in the same deadpan style! Keep making more as I can't get enough of them!!
HA-HA in the defence structural sense of the word most likely is some sort of abbreviation, which those military types seem to be very fond of... And most likely French for good measure...
Don't that when building a ha-ha you have to careful with your measurements. Otherwise you could be like the people working from BS Johnson's plans and end up building a hoho, which is substantially more hazardous to fall into. (If nothing else, getting out requires a rather tall ladder.)
There are many of these around country houses in the UK that were landscaped by Capability Brown ... ...Sheppey : measure of distance equal to about 7⁄8 of a mile (1.4 km), defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque : The Meaning of Liff Adams/Lloyd
One obscure historian points out that there is a Moroccan tribe called the Haha that have been building ha-ha's for a thousand years. The French would never stoop to stealing the idea and not giving the natives the credit would they? Sorry I can't find his name. I can remember it being unpronounceable and very african.
Clearly the only way to make them safe is to position trampolines at the bottom - so people falling in can gracefully bounce out onto the other side. This means the "ha-ha" will thereafter called a "ta-dah"
There is a passage in E. M. Foster's _The Longest Journey_ which mentions it: '… The lawn ended in a Ha-ha (“Ha! ha! who shall regard it?”), and thence the bare land sloped down into the village. …' Perhaps there was a verse or other literary reference, of which this fragment is a part, which gave this peculiar non-feature of the landscape its name.
When I was a kid we were on a family trip to Lotherton Hall in Yorkshire. My brother and I were running around like lunatics, as kids do, and he fell straight into a ha-ha. That's how I learned about them!
@@Hallands. Well, as you seem a bit simple, I'm going to say goodbye to you a second time. The first time was this morning when I flushed my toilet. I hope it's the last.
Otacatapetl We've met? You've said goombye? Your staple friends are turds? You're simply simple? Why would I want to know all these things about you. You seem a bit empty and tense. Are you very unhappy?
Well there you go! Now I can tell my friends that a HaHa runs around the infamous Z-Ward at the former Glenside Mental Hospital in Adelaide, South Australia. A way to keep the former residents in check without a huge wall looming above the grounds! zward.com.au/ www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/07/04/4039387.htm
Here in Canada in the province of Quebec about 30km south of the St.Lawrence River you can find a village on Hwy 85 named "Saint-Louis-du-Ha!-Ha!" (and yes the exclamation marks and hyphens are included). Perhaps you can travel there. Just type it into Google to find it. BTW, you can practice your antique French as Quebecois (the French dialect spoken in Quebec) is based on Pre-Revolution French and has laws so that they preserve it and don't modernise.
I've been there! It's a nice little town utterly dominated by an enormous church, as is typical of small towns in Quebec. There's also an astronomical observatory.
Damn...I just found this guy's channel randomly n I like trains so I watched one video n now I can't stop!...This guy's awesome...🤣🤣 Can't believe he has just 70k subs!...Keep it up man...you're doing a wonderful job. 👍👍
Westward Ho! must be disappointed to be usurped by the Canadian town of St-Louis-de-Ha!-Ha! in the exclamation mark world record... (I actually knew what a ha-ha was - perk of working in a large country house during my a-levels...)
If you want to search all of TFL's bus stops (as of 2015) from Abbey Lane to Zig Zag Road then look here: data.london.gov.uk/download/tfl-bus-stop-locations-and-routes/673033eb-59a6-4903-84bc-d24495661707/bus-stops-10-06-15.csv or if you just want a summary then look here: diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2014/08/100-slightly-strange-london-bus-stop.html and brush up on the lingo here: diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2020/05/naming-of-parts.html
The house I was born in is about five minutes' walk away, near the other end of Kinveachy Gardens. And reputedly my father was offered the position of goalkeeper for Arsenal in about 1930, but turned it down because it didn't seem like a secure position. Many thanks for this.
There are worse things than falling in a Ha-Ha. You could, for instance, fall into a Ho-Ho. An invention by Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, the Ho-Ho is quite similar to the Ha-Ha, except it's fifty feet deep, leading to significant risk of injury. This, among other things, is why Bergholt is commonly referred to as "Bloody Stupid" Johnson. (Mr. Johnson, of course, a character in the famous Discworld books by Sir Terry Pratchett)
The Trophy was initiated by businessman and sporting enthusiast Sir Thomas Lipton, who wished to see a competition between the leading football clubs of Europe. The football associations of Italy, Germany and Switzerland duly complied. The often told story was that the Football Association of England refused to nominate a club and Woolwich Arsenal F.C., addressing it to W.A. A.F.C. was approached. The unspecific address caused the letter to be sent to the wrong team, West Auckland A.F.C, and thus the eclectic group of coal miners pawned their belongings and duly made the journey to Turin. However recent research shows this to be incorrect.[2] Many of the players paid out of their own pocket and lost a week's wages to do so. They beat Stuttgarter Sportfreunde in the semi-finals 2-0; in the final, on April 12, 1909, West Auckland faced Swiss side FC Winterthur and beat them 2-0 as well to take the trophy. Two years later, West Auckland returned, and after beating FC Zürich 2-0, won 6-1 in the final over future Italian giants Juventus. This story was made into a TV film in 1982 called The World Cup: A Captain's Tale................................if the postie had delivered the invitation to woolwich arsenal instead , then Arsenal fc ' might ' have been the first ever team to win The World Cup :)))))))))
If you think that road names are funny and rude. There is a small village in Worcestershire called Bell End near Stourbridge and Kidderminster. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_End
In front of the Royal Crescent in Bath there is a ha-ha. Always get a chuckle when driving through Quebec and see sign for Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! just off the Trans Canada Highway.
Sorry Tim, but you're wrong. It was actually named by a member of the old Woolwich Council. Said councillor was a Spurs fan and he named the road just after his team finished above Arsenal in the league.
There is a village near me with the wonderful name of Bell End. Just past Lickey End. Honest, guv, it's true, there are photos! Wish I could post one here
This is a place I would like to see in the United Kingdom. I'll take the military place seriously, but not the street. Nice place. I like it at the end he falls in the hole. Lol.
I looked into Ha Ha Road origins some years ago and what I came up with was a fence or hedge, one side of the fence or hedge ground level was lower than the other. That was about it, probably something well known hundreds of years ago but now lost in the mist's of time. Thanks for this, well done.
