Tittle Cott or is it Tickle Cock?

From the Yorkshire Post 11 March 2006
Residents cock-a-hoop after winning fight to keep saucy underpass name
Joanne GinleyRESIDENTS have launched a successful campaign to save a saucily-named underpass after they got an inkling a name change was being mooted to spare people's blushes.
Planners wanted to change Tickle Cock Bridge to Tittle Cott Bridge as part of a regeneration scheme being filmed for a Channel 4 TV series.But residents in Castleford stood up as one, criticised planners for their modesty and said: "We want our Tickle Cock back."Brian Lewis, who chaired a residents' meeting, said: "It's part of our heritage and we want to keep the name."With all the sex on television before the 9pm watershed anyway we can't understand why the architects were being so coy."The railway underpass in the town centre has been called Tickle Cock by locals for at least a century and dates back to Victorian times. It is thought the name refers to a "monkey run" where the lads and lasses of Castleford did their courting.Painter David Prudhoe, 58, said: "It's been called Tickle Cock Bridge since way before I was born."Others may think it is rude but locals are not offended by the name. We don't need a new name, it has already got a fine one."Everybody wants to keep the name. I think it's a laugh. It is a nice name and we don't want the name changing. "Imagine the uproar nationally if some faceless committee decided to change the name of the Traitor's Gate in London. There would be an outcry."Mr Lewis, a local historian who works for the Regional Development Agency, said: "The district council had instructed the architects designing the project that the bridge was called Tittle Cott and that appeared on the plans."I was horrified. It is another example of the nanny state telling us something we don't want to do. "They apparently fear the sexual innuendo of the name yet for generations local people have been using the name without thinking."He added: "It dates back to the late 19th Century or early 20th Century and would function in the same way as any 'monkey run' where you paraded up and down trying to find a boyfriend or girlfriend."It is part of our history and it is not the right of council officers to impose on the population what they think is politically correct."The people of Castleford do not want Tickle Cock Bridge renamed."Mr Lewis said he now understood that the locals would get their wish and Tickle Cock Bridge would be kept.The Castleford project is a regeneration scheme in-volving Channel 4, Wakefield Council and other partners.A Channel 4 spokeswoman said: "Some people call it Tickle Cock Bridge and others say Tittle Cott. There is no plan to rechristen the underpass."
You can find out more about the plans for the bridge at the Castleford Project website.