Place Name
Danebury Ring, also known as Danebury Hillfort, is one of the best-preserved Iron Age hillforts in southern England. It was constructed around 2,500 years ago and was occupied for about 500 years, from the 6thCentury BC to about AD100. It is situated on a prominent chalk hill, offering strategic views over the surrounding landscape. The name Danbury comes from the Domesday Book of 1086, where it was first recorded as Danengeberia. The name means the burgh or fort of Dene’s people. 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-19th-century 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.
