Welcome to Chandlers Ford, a community website in Hampshire.

Also known as Chandler's Ford this local Hampshire website has interesting articles on community information including travel, days out, events, business, charities, aviation, walks, wildlife reserves, website design, weather, clubs, churches, schools, health, food and much more that will interest you the viewer...

For those that have visited before you will notice that the style of the website has changed to create a faster loading site for viewers on lower download speeds. If you prefer the previous style you can choose it on the left. For best results we recommend you use the Mozilla Firefox browser and Adobe Flash Player.  Due to problems in MSN Internet Explorer version 6 some of the advanced features used on this website may not perform as well as under the Mozilla Firefox browser. You may wish to visit my other websites: WebPoland or WebBritain.

Click here for the Eastleigh West Safer Neighbourhoods Spring 2010 Newsletter.

Location

Chandlers Ford, Hampshire is situated about seven miles to the north of the city of Southampton and is in the Borough of Eastleigh. Until recently Chandlers Ford was an ‘unparished area’ of Eastleigh but a recent poll has been taken and this has now changed. It last had its own parish council in 1932. Chandlers Ford now has its own parish council once again.

It comes under the postcode SO53 and in 1850 had a population of about 200 but this has now grown to well over 20,000. The M3 motorway flanks the eastern border of Chandler's Ford and the town is known for its many working commuters to both Southampton and London. The railway line is now a single track running from Eastleigh to Salisbury via Romsey and the station at Hursley Road which was closed in 1969 reopened in 2003. Southampton Airport is only a few miles away being just to the east of Eastleigh.

History

It is not entirely clear when the area became known as Chandlers Ford but it had three fords, the most important being the one that crossed the brook on the junction between Hursley Road and Winchester Road by the shopping mall, Central Precinct. The ‘Chandler’ part of the name has many theories.

The area possible has historical connections with battles between the Saxons and Danes in the 800’s. It is thought that King William II, Rufus was killed on 2 August 1100 while out hunting in the New Forest; (Chandlers Ford being part of the forest) The Rufus Stone is at Canteron Glen to mark the site where Sir Walter Tyrell fired the fatal arrow at the King. The area is also linked to Oliver Cromwell’s family and the Manor of Merdon which later became Hursley Park Estates.

In the nineteenth century the main industry of the area was brick-making due to the local clay being of good quality for such purposes. There where three sites, Castle Lane, Fryern Hill and Common Road.

Hiltingbury Lakes is located at Chandlers Ford in Hampshire and has about seventeen acres of water, woodland and wildlife. Here you can enjoy walking, fishing or just watching the wildlife.

You can read more about Chandlers Ford in a book called, “The Chandler’s Ford Story” by Barbara Hillier and Gerald Ponting.

chandlersford.org.uk being a local community website will as time goes on include links and articles about local issues but also travel both here in the UK and abroad, the weather (all us Brits like to discuss this subject but do we know much about it). Other subjects like interesting ideas for a day out and in the future we would like to create a section about hobbies.

We are also building a section on website links to other community sites so you can see what goes on elsewhere. Local businesses are very important to the economy so there is a business directory and we will soon being doing articles on shops and employment.

Have you ever wondered how much it really costs to run your car? Well, why not take a look at Car Costs and discover the hidden costs that those in power would rather you were not aware of. Let us for example take a family car bought new for £13,000 using a loan of £10,000 over three years and doing an average of 12,000 miles per year. Based on a salary of £25,000 per annum. You may end up paying 83% tax.

How you can make this website even better.

Can you write an article about a hobby or craft that you enjoy or about a book that you have recently read or a place that you have been to or something else that may be of interest to the people of Chandler's Ford?  We are looking for interesting articles and details of local events.

Have a look around this website and enjoy it. This is a living ongoing site and I acknowledge that there is still much to do and I would welcome any contributions from the people of the area or else where in the world who feel they can make it even better. Use the "Contacts" form to send in your article(s) or if you would like to advertise on chandlersford.org.uk.

David Smith

Administrator/Web Master