please empty your brain below

Yeah, I think looking for post war redevelopment and cut off streets is the best bet.

The shortest I can think of is Midlothian Road in Mile End Park - you know the tiny stub off Burdett Road with the Afghani restaurant in the park?
The measuring tool on Google Maps thinks its about 12m.
My contribution to the quest for the shortest street is Copperbeech Close, NW3. It's not even shown on google maps. Complete can of worms.
I know a short street but not sure it's a contender - Glastonbury Road, Edmonton, N9. It should be a continuation of Marlborough Road, but for some reason isn't - and it used to have a garage but now doesn't - but that space was transformed into flats so it does have a front door. It's also a serviceable road if you can get past the rubbish - streetview did not visit on its best day, sadly.
Allegedly the shortest road in the country is The Bow in Dorchester. It's just a street corner opposite the Corn exchange.
Perhaps alleys and passageways be included, provided that they have a dedicated front door and are on a map.
Back to Wickham Chase.

I was wondering how long it would take you to visit it.

I do not believe for one moment there was ever a road linking Wickham Chase and Langley Way 50 years ago as described. I would have been a teenager then and old enough to remember it if it had been there.

Furthermore, if you take your Ordnance Survey Map link and select 1:1250 Air Photos 1944-1950 there is no real evidence of it. And if that road existed what was its name? At the most the builders might have built a temporary road to assist with the building of the estate. I think you have been misled for a second time by overzealous map-makers.

Also worthy of note is that the unbroken portion of Pickhurst Rise (no junctions) is probably as long as Langley Way. If we are talking about stretches of roads rather than insisting on taking into account where the road officially begins and ends it would be worthy of inclusion.
I put forward Mansion House Street, the tiny roadway between Bank Junction and the split of Queen Vic' Street / Poultry. The only building with that address may be Mansion House itself (but its main entrance is on the west side of the building...); the bank building opposite doesn't have a doorway in that street as far as I can tell.
"and that's the long and the short of it."
And that's why I love this blog!
When I lived in Ilford, I was told that Mortlake Road (off Ilford Lane) was something like the longest residential street in the country. I've no idea if this is true or not (probably not).
Can I make a plea to have the map links published using the Geohack service (same as Wikipedia uses) rather than a bare OSM link?

I wanted to research Kirk Street and needed to manually switch to Google for streetview/3d aerial view, Geohack allows you to select mapping website of choice, e.g. like this.

(yes i understand this is more complex to set up, use a spreadsheet to generate the URL to streamline this)
Another notable mention is Sise Lane which is around 25m and isn't a cul-de-sac, although with Mansion House St about 150m away, it looks like it's not even the shortest in the City...
Plough Street is a short section of road off Buckle Street in Aldgate East.
Maryland Point in Maryland is an unusually short road (~30m), although you wouldn’t notice if you were standing on it and there’s no obvious reason why it is differentiated from Leytonstone Road on one end and The Grove on the other. It has one solitary address: the Cart and Horses pub (birthplace of Iron Maiden).
There’s a Halcrow Street in Shadwell which is pretty short, <50m it would appear from Google Maps. Possibly a contender.
According to the GBoR, the shortest street in the UK is Ebenezer Place in Wick.
1.7 meters long.
Yes, one point seven meters. It meets roads at either end and has an address/front door on it too.
And I've walked its entire length. Two brisk paces.

dg writes: 2.05m.
Limes Field Road in Mortlake is another very short through road.
As far as short streets go (sorry), I remember reading that map publishers — in this article, the London A-Z — often incorporated fictional tiny streets into maps so that they could detect copyright breaches if somebody filched the map for another publication. Any chance this explains the mystery turning off Wickham Chase?

dg writes: no.
Hi DG
Really love this post and discussion.
A question that I’ve pondered as a former urban designer is the largest urban block in London. This is a continuous adopted street route which joins in a single unbroken loop with buildings fronting all or most of the loop.
The reason why this is interested is because it is related to permeability- a concept generally seen as being a good thing. And of course it helps to use land effectively - generally you need street access to enable many land uses.
One could focus on inner London in order to cut out that random golf course in Bromley surrounded by houses…..
anyway one future challenge!
An option is Ingress Street in Hammersmith, 38m.
Regarding the size of urban blocks...

A former resident of Elgin Road emailed me on Monday to say that she was advised to walk round the block during her pregnancy, and because she lived on Elgin Road that was (unintentionally) just over a mile.
What about Ranwell Street in glorious E3 another 12m long road.










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