Vanessa Avenue is in Laverstock, on the ‘Pebbledash Estate’ which also includes Napier Crescent and Linden Close.
The pebble-dashed estate is one of a couple of estates in Salisbury (the other being Fugglestone Red) where the road names seem to have no theme or connection with each other at all – or at least none that I can see. This one is particularly irritating because I grew up on one of the adjacent roads.
Anyhow, ‘Vanessa’ is a relatively interesting name. It was invented by the Irish writer Jonathon Swift (most famous for ‘Gulliver’s Travels’) as a nickname for Esther Vanhomrigh, whom he taught.1. Millais’ painting Vanessa was painted from his imagination.
The only other name I know of which was invented by a writer is ‘Wendy’, which JM Barrie created for his Peter Pan story.
Footnotes
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Vanhomrigh [↩]
[...] Both of the roads known as just ‘The Avenue’ in Salisbury run broadly East to West, but no convention is being followed, since ‘The Avenue’ in Laverstock is actually perpendicular to Vanessa Avenue [...]
[...] them. To use a favourite word of my daughter, the other road names on the estate (Napier Crescent, Vanessa Avenue etc) are fairly ‘random’. There are two possible reasons for the name of Linden Close [...]
[...] grounds also included the land which is now the ‘pebble-dashed’ estate (Linden Close, Vanessa Avenue, Napier Crescent et al). Laverstock House was ‘distinguished as one of the first [...]