The village of West End is four miles north east of Southampton and comprises of mainly residential development. The ecclesiastical Parish was made out of the Parish of South Stoneham in 1840 and the parish church of St James was also built about this time, and later it was rebuilt to a design by Blomfield in 1890.

The civil Parish of West End was constituted in 1894 from South Stoneham parish and included the tithings of Allington and Shamblehurst.

Old West End Fire Service 1939 Photo courtesy of West End Local History Society

Until a few decades ago this was a completely rural village but 1993 changed all that when the Rose Bowl was built, this was the new Hampshire County Cricket Ground which was originally in Northlands Road in Southampton, it was built alongside a modern recreational centre and a nine hole golf course on what used to be Hickley Farm where the commercial growing of tomatoes began back in the 19th century.

The name of the village was originally one word and was situated on the Romsey to Portsmouth Road where the mail coaches to Poole in Dorset ran. Here on the top of a high ridge is where armies once had their encampments especially during the Napoleonic Wars. There were beacons and telegraphs stations here hence Beacon Road and Telegraph Road.

Moorgreen Hospital which is an impressive looking Victorian building was the old workhouse, The South Stoneham Institute and was built in 1848 but before then a poorhouse was on this site. The Countess Mountbatten Hospice one of the pioneers of the concept was here as well.

Over the past years the village has gone through a lot of growth but the majority of people here commute via the M27 motorway or by rail from nearby Eastleigh up to London.  The present parish of West End got its name from the west end of the tithings of Shamblehurst or that it was the end of the Waste or Common Netley and was formed out of the much older parish of South Stoneham which included the tithings of Allington and Shamblehurst.

[At the end of the 16th century, came the enclosure of fields and it could well be that the name comes from the farms of that time, Wildern Farm, Heath House Farm and Hedge End Farm in Freegrounds Road can be dated back to the middle of the 18th century.
(Taken from "A Tale of Two Villages, Hedge End and Botley" by Bill Lyon)]

The Hampshire Rose Bowl the new home of County Cricket
Moorgreen Hospital formerly the old Union Workhouse and now a hospital for the elderly

WEST END LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY WEBSITE
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