Waterlooville

Waterlooville is a town in the Borough of Havant in Hampshire, England, approximately north northeast of Portsmouth. It is the largest town in the borough. The town had a population of 64,350 in the 2011 Census. It is surrounded by Purbrook, Blendworth, Cowplain, Lovedean, Clanfield, Catherington, Crookhorn, Denmead, Hambledon, Horndean and Widley. It forms part of the South Hampshire conurbation. The town formed around the old A3 London to Portsmouth road. It is reputed that the name derived from a pub that stood at the centre of the town, then known as Wait Lane End, where the stage-coach horses waited to change places with the team that pulled the coach up and over Portsdown Hill. The pub had been named Heroes of Waterloo because, on its opening day in 1815, soldiers who had just disembarked at Portsmouth, returning from the Battle of Waterloo, decided to stop there and celebrate their victory. According to local legend, many of them settled there. The pub was thereafter renamed in their honour and the area around the pub became known as Waterloo. In order to differentiate the town from other places with the same name, it became known as Waterlooville at a later date. The town was known as Waterloo parish at the time of the 1911 Census. The original "Heroes" pub was at a crossroads near the main bus-stop. It was demolished in 1966 and replaced with a bank; a new pub took the same name and is located at the northern end of the shopping precinct. There are two other pubs in the town centre: The Wellington closed in May 2017 and the site was redeveloped as a cocktail bar, called Number 73, which opened in March 2018. Other pubs are The Denmead Queen, part of the JD Wetherspoon pub chain. In June 2015 Waterlooville town celebrated its first 200 years, its origins and history in a festival called Waterlooville 200. The town centre was closed to traffic in 1985 when a bypass was constructed to take traffic away from the main shopping area. The bypass, initially anonymous, was named Maurepas Way sometime after the two towns were twinned in 1995.