Place Name
Now a suburb of Portsmouth, Farlington has roots dating back to the medieval period. The name is derived from Old English, meaning a farmstead or enclosure surrounded by ferns. It was once a small rural village, centred around Farlington Marshes but in the 18thCentury, Farlington began to grow, partially due to its proximity to Portsmouth. 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.
