Place Name
Agricultural heritage. Named after farmer William Cowdrey (born sometime around 1661 – May 17, 1723). Farming had taken place around here since the late Middle Ages, appearing in the 15thCentury as Butlers Farm. The name changed some 200 years later, when it came under the management of a William Cowdrey. The Cowdrey name remained attached to the land despite being subsequently managed by leading farmers such as George Heydon and Benjamin Paterson, a so-called scientific farmer. In the 1770s it became part of the wider 340 acre estate of Benjamin Bond-Hopkins. The estate was inherited by his only legitimate daughter, Caroline Phillips. In the 1830s, she began to sell off parcels of land to the railway company which was planning a new London and Southampton link. Ordnance survey maps from 1865 show the area as farmland subdivided into fields, some of which were tree lined. The estate, which covered north of the Broadway from Haydons Road to the main line railway and comprised of Cowdrey Farm, Cowdrey House, and Durnsfords Lodge resisted building until the late Victorian period. Then in 1872 the land the Bond Hopkins estate, was was sold off development.