Colin Spackman, following an article in the WWN last month, takes another look at Wellington’s road names and finds links with the town’s industrial past.

New housing sites usually require several new names for streets. In Wellington, the developers of the Longforth Farm site have taken the opportunity to commemorate several local connections with names that maybe not everyone will recognise.

Although the development is commonly known as Longforth Farm – it is built on land that belonged to that farm – Longforth itself is not used in a street name. That is perhaps just as well since Longforth Road, which leads northwards from the High Street, does not physically connect with the new estate.

Up to now, most of the streets are named for local industrialists.

Price’s Avenue – without a tree it appears – commemorates the Price family who founded what is now Relyon, makers of ‘The Best Beds In The World’ – according to the logo on its lorries. Joseph Price came to Wellington from Montacute in the 1850s and started manufacturing soft mattresses, pillows and palliasses in his factory in South Street. The business was taken over by his sons, George and Edward, who named the company Price Bothers & Co. It was renamed Relyon in the 1930s but for many years was still known locally as Price’s.

Thomas Place may be seen to recall two families. One of these families, led by William, were the brickmakers at Poole. The clay pit has been used for landfill and elsewhere on the site is the recycling centre. Bricks were made at Poole for more than 150 years, until the late 20th Century. Many houses in Wellington were built with the distinctive orange-red bricks produced by the company. The other Thomas family lived in Drake’s Place, the large house just east of the parish church, largely hidden behind trees.

Gregory Terrace is named for the Gregory family whose retail chemist’s business developed via veterinary products and then pioneering aerosol manufacturing into Swallowfield, the toiletries and cosmetics company in Station Road.

Lillebonne Way and Normandy Drive both relate to Lillebonne, in Normandy, France, which became Wellington’s first twin town, in 1964. It has since been joined as a twin town by Immenstadt in Germany and Torres Vedras in Portugal.

Somehow Lillebonne was used for a street name on Longforth Farm even though the twinning had been commemorated for more than 40 years by Lillebonne Close off Priory.

In a previous article on the Cade’s Farm street names, Aspin Road and Aspin Close were inadvertently omitted. They commemorate Selwyn Aspin (1931-2012), who for over 30 years was involved with Wellington Football Club, including roles as first-team manager and committee chairman.

Since that article, another road has been named Meyer Close, in honour of F. W. Meyer who designed Wellington’s Park as well as parks in Sherborne and Poole in Dorset and at the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley.

If you have ideas on other aspects of Wellington’s history that could be commemorated in a street name then you could let the town council know – housing developers sometimes consult the council for suitable names for streets.

More detailed histories of Relyon, Thomas’s brickmaking and Swallowfield are available in booklets published by, and available from, Wellington Museum.