Napier Crescent is in Laverstock, which is a village a mile to the west of Salisbury city centre. It’s on an estate built by a developer called Ford, or perhaps Fforde, in about 1964. It’s often referred to as ‘the pebbledash estate’.
I have no idea why it’s called Napier Crescent. This is particularly irritating because I grew up in Napier Crescent.
There are at least two people in history possibly prominent enough to have had the road named after them:
- General Sir Charles James Napier, who was a one of Wellington’s generals in the Napoleonic Wars
- John Napier, the inventor of logarithms
The word Napier is quite interesting. I think it derives from the same root as ‘napkin’ and ‘nappy’. It means something like ‘linen keeper’, from the old French ‘nappe meaning ‘table cloth’. 1
Footnotes
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