Highfield Road is off from the Devizes Road, which is one of the two main roads that go north from Salisbury up onto Salisbury Plain.
I think the name ‘Highfield’ speaks for itself – it was, presumably, a ‘high field’ because it is at the ‘top’1 of Devizes Road.
It could be that the name comes from a person called Highfield. According to the Surnameweb website, the surname Highfield ‘originated in Southampton, England’, where ‘part of Southampton is still named Highfield.’2
Highfield Road, Coventry
I’m working through the origins of Salisbury’s road names in alphabetical order3, and the alphabet has thrown up a couple of neat juxtapositions4 are, as far as I can think, the only two roads in Salisbury which share their names with football stadia. Both are now defunct.
Image from Amazon
Highfield Road was the home ground of Coventry City from 1899 until 2005, when the club moved to the Ricoh Arena. The site of the stadium is currently being redeveloped as a housing estate, but, in what I think is a really nice touch part of what would have been the pitch itself will be relaid with grass so kids can play football on it. 5
The Spion Kop
Highfield Road had a terrace called ‘the Spion Kop’. The Kop was named after a famous Boer War battle – I think I discussed this in the post on Ladysmith Road. The terrace was built and named in 19226.
Footnotes
- It’s\at the top of the hill of Devizes Road – it’s not at the northerly end of the road [↩]
- Origin of Highfield [↩]
- Actually, reverse alphabetical order for reasons too rubbish to relate [↩]
- The other recent one would be the two great schisms in the Christian Church being represented side by side in Julius Court and Jewell Close.
This road and the nextHighbury Avenue [↩]
- Highfield Road – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [↩]
- Old Football Grounds Highfield Road, Coventry City FC [↩]
