Place Name
Takes its name from the small Hampshire parish to the north east of Southampton, its name literally meaning the eastern pastureland. The hamlet the ecclesiastical parish was named after is in fact spelt Eastley but after author Charlotte Mary Yonge, a resident of nearby Otterbourne, donated £500 towards the cost of building a parish church she was asked which of the two villages to name the parish after; she chose Eastley, but chose to alter the spelling to Eastleigh as she considered this more modern. As for this street name, in 1951 the architect’s department at the London County Council selected this area of Roehampton as the site for one of the largest and most radical housing developments ever undertaken in London – the Alton Estate. At the time of its completion in 1958, Alton West was considered by many British architects to be the crowning glory of post-World War II social housing. The estate itself takes its name from Alton Lodge, an early-19thCentury villa on the Kingston Road, occupied by Dr Thomas Hake from around 1854 until 1872. Seizing on this as a naming opportunity, the local government chose to name almost all of the other roads on the Alton Estate after places in Hampshire.
