Harefield House was built in about 1846 for Sir Edward Butler, one-time chairman of the Southampton and Salisbury Railway Company. The house, which was situated just south of West End Road close to where Harefield School now stands, was set in an estate of 238 acres with pleasure gardens, terraces, an arboretum and an ornamental pond. Sale particulars of 1886 describe the house as a “most substantial erection of Elizabethan style of architecture”. There were two lodges, both situated on what is now West End Road, but neither has survived. In 1890 the house was let and afterwards sold to Edwin Jones, founder of the famous Southampton department store. The house was destroyed by fire in 1915 and never rebuilt. Break up of the estate for housing occurred in the 1940s.
Harefield is a district and ward name denoting the district on the city's east boundary, north of Thornhill Park Road and east and south of West End Road. It was named after Harefield House.
Harefield House
Photograph, c.1915
Further reading:
Lost Houses of Southampton, by Jessica Vale. (HS/i)
‘The Country Houses of Southampton’, by Jessica Vale in Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, volume 39, 1983, p183, 188. (HS/i)
Harefield: A Hidden Heritage, by Keith Marsh et al, p8-18.
Wot No Dinner? A Unique Celebration of Queen Victoria’s Coronation at West End (PDF), by Sue Ballard in Westender, March-April 2018.
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