In his book “Swanmore Since 1840” local historian Peter Watkins suggested that Orchardlea may have been named after a house which once stood on the land there. Sadly, there seems to be no trace that such a house ever existed.

 

In earlier times Hill Pound was so called because it was the land where stray cattle or those found illegally grazing could be kept until they were claimed by their owners. How much of the land at Hill Pound was the actual “pound” is no longer clear.

 

The Droxford Enclosure Act of 1855 divided the common land in and around Swanmore into numerous plots which were then sold off to be used for agriculture and to build houses. The Enclosure Acts in England and Wales created legal property rights to land, particularly open fields, that had previously been held in common (where everyone has collective rights over the land). Between 1604 and 1914 more than  5,200 individual acts enclosing common land were passed by Parliament, affecting 10,000 sq miles (28,000 sq km) of land.

 

The 1855 Droxford Enclosure Map (Map 1) shows that some of the land along Hill Pound was divided into small plots at this time. There was similar enclosure along what is now known as Mislingford Road. These small plots would have been sold to local people and many of the houses that survive here date from this time. 

 

However, there were a number of much larger plots within this triangle of land both along Hill Pound and to the south of the area. These would most probably have remained in cultivation as farmland or orchards. 

 

Much of the land around what would become Orchardlea was once part of the Hill Place Estate. This estate  had been owned since the end of the eighteenth century by the Goodlad family: Richard Goodlad (d.1821) and then his son, Richard Redfern Goodlad (d.1880), followed by Richard Redfern’s surviving sisters. At its peak the estate covered 1,059 acres, much of it in the heart of the village. The estate included several of the village farms, including Jervis Court, Cott Street Farm and Hill Farm as well as several houses such as Jervis Lodge and Hampton Hill Cottage. After Leonora Goodlad died in 1895 the property passed to her nephew Major Walter Daubeny and it was his death in April 1914 that led to the sale and break-up of the estate in 1916.  

 

The auctioneers dealing with the estate sale produced extensive maps, not just of the estate properties but also showing most of Swanmore’s larger houses and farms often with the names of the owners. The various plots up for sale were individually numbered with more than 300 specific features within the plots described in detail in the sale prospectus. 

 

Map 2 is taken from the Hill Place Estate sale prospectus. The triangle of land shown on the map, now partly occupied by Orchardlea, hints at some of the 1855 enclosure plots along Hill Pound while the jagged line to the south of the plot matches the boundary between the enclosure plots on the Mislingford Road side of the triangle and the southern boundary, but does not indicate in any detail what was on this land or who may have owned it (Map 3).

 

By 1970 when the first planning application for. what would become Orchardlea was submitted, there had obviously been many changes to the original shapes of the enclosure plots (Map 4) but the land not allocated to building plots in 1855 is still clearly recognisable. In 1970 the planning application refers to the development site as “2.1 ha (5.2acres) of land to the rear of Greenacres.”

 

The planning application suggests that the owners of six houses along Mislingford Road were involved in the project with their houses listed as part of the development site. In addition to Greenacres these properties were called Rosemary Cottage, The Haven, The Tea Garden, Bennetts Cottage, and Tan Tivvy. None of them was called Orchardlea. The application to develop the land is signed by residents who lived at Tan Tivvy and Greenacres respectively, as well as a third signatory who lived in Farlington.  

 

So how did the development get its name?  

 

Long-time residents of Swanmore recall the land behind the Mislingford Road houses being occupied by fruit trees – which may be where the idea for Orchardlea (i.e. Orchard meadow) came from. Others suggest that it could have been a reference to the orchards of Hill Farm, which – back in 1970 – were more extensive than they are now, with the new development being “in its lee”(i.e. in the shelter of the apple trees). Although, as these orchards are several fields away on the other side of Mislingford Road, this may be less probable. 

 

Whatever the origin, one of the Mislingford Road householders did not sell to the 1970 property developers: a bungalow remained tucked into the development for many years before the owner or his/her heirs finally sold up and the six houses of Hunters Chase were built on this site thus filling in an odd gap in the site and explaining why Orchardlea is the shape that it is.