Milford Trading Estate, Salisbury

This page discusses both the name ‘Milford’ and Milford Trading Estate itself.

The Milford Trading Estate is to the south east of Salisbury, just off from Tollgate Road.

What is Milford?

Milford itself is more difficult to pin down as a particular location, or set of locations.

Old Milford

Before the move from Old Sarum to Salisbury, much of the area that was to become Salisbury seems to have been known as ‘the manor of Milford’.

For this reason, the Milford Hall Hotel is in an area that certainly wouldn’t now be thought of as Milford – the hotel is at the north end of Castle Street.

This is also borne out in some old maps. In William Naish’s map of 1751 the words ‘Part of Milford’ are written over an area extending from the current Hamilton Road (at the north end of Castle Street) around to the London Road. The map is online at Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum : Galleries

Today’s ‘Milford’

Richard Durman, in his book on Milford (which I’d highly recommend), defines Milford as the whole of Milford Hill as far north as Saint Mark’s Roundabout, and the old Milton Episcopi, and as far south as Milford bridge.

I’m very slightly uneasy with this. I would tend to think of ‘Milford’ as consisting of the houses at the bottom of Shady Bower, Milford Mill Road and the roads adjoining it and Potters Way. However, such a narrow definition would exclude Milford Hill, Milford Hollow and Milford Trading Estate.

Etymology of ‘Milford’

The etymology of ‘Milford’ is fairly clear – it means a ‘ford by a mill’¹

I did think that there might be an alternative derivation – ‘mild ford’ i.e. a ford which is calm and easy to cross. This would have correlated with the ‘bland ford’ which I had assumed was the derivation of Blandford, but the name Blandford seems to be derived from a fish called the ‘blay’ ². I was wrong on both counts!

Milford Within, Milford Without, Milfords Pichard, Richard and Episcopi

In 1386, there were three separate settlements with the name Milford. These were Milford Pichard, Milford Richard and Milton Episcopi.

These names reflect the practice of suffixing a general name with the name of the owner of the land (as with Winterbourne Dauntsey or Fisherton Anger).

‘Pichard’ and ‘Richard’ are surnames.

‘Episcopi’ means ‘belonging to the Bishop’. ³

‘Milford Within’ and ‘Milford Without’ were used to distinguish the parts of Milford that were inside and outside of the city boundaries. ‘Without’ is used in the sense of ‘outside’, rather than in the sense of ‘lacking’. The word is used in the same sense in the hymn:

There was a green hill far away,
Without a city wall

Milford Trading Estate

Milford Trading Estate, Salisbury

I believe it was built on or near the site of the Milford railway station. Milford railway station opened in 1847 ⁴, but closed to passenger traffic in 1859. It closed to goods traffic in 1967 ⁵

Footnotes

1. ‘Milford’, Richard Durman, page 5, Hobnob Press, 2007 [↩]
2. Old Blandford Road and Blandford Road [↩]
3. Until a couple of weeks ago I wouldn’t have known this, but it’s one of those odd little coincidences that the previous road name I wrote about featured John Milton’s anti-episcopalianism. He not only wanted to abolish the office of Bishop, he also argued that the Bishops should be executed and predicted that they would then spend eternity in Hell. [↩]
4. Station Terrace [↩]
5. Southern Railway routes west of Salisbury – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [↩]