Hilltop Way is, logically enough, on top of a hill.
The hill in question is the ridge1 that stretches from Old Sarum down to the ring road and beyond.
Image from Amazon
The hill’s southern end was once called Mizmaze Hill2.
Hilltop Way is at the northern end of the ridge, near Old Sarum. I believe it’s part of the ‘Pauls Dene estate’, but I’m not entirely clear about this.
I’ve heard the area occasionally referred to as Pauls Dene or Pauls Dene estate, but there’s a reference in Hansard for 1978 to ‘Pauls Dene estate’ being ’150 surplus defence houses’3. I think that Hilltop Way is more recent than this but I may be wrong.
I think of the ridge as being one of four ‘fingers’ that reach out from Salisbury Plain – the others being Harnham Hill, the ‘Devizes Road’ hill and Laverstock Downs – but geography and geology aren’t my strong points so this may be totally wrong.
Footnotes
- I’m not sure whether ‘ridge’ is an accurate word in geographical terms, but it seems like a ridge to me. [↩]
- Salisbury and Stonehenge – Mizmaze Hill, Salisbury [↩]
- Pauls Dene Estate, Salisbury (Hansard, 23 May 1978). I was pleased to find this reference because it disproves a fallacy I’ve heard repeated several times. People have told me that Salisbury’s MP during the 1970s, Michael Hamilton only spoke once in the House of Commons, and that was to ask if the windows might be opened. [↩]
