Swiftdown, like several or the other road names on the Riding’s Mead estate, is an invented word made by joining the name of a bird with the name of a geographical feature.
The swift is a migratory bird which stays in England from April to August, then spends the winter in Africa. 1
The word ‘swift’ itself is Old English, meaning to move quickly, and the bird was named after the movement rather than vice versa 2
