Leigh Park

Large post-war council estate with its own community identity, schools, shops, green spaces, and access to Staunton Country Park.

Leigh Park is a large housing estate to the north of Havant, built in the late 1940s and 1950s by Portsmouth City Council to rehouse families displaced by wartime bombing and slum clearance. The estate was one of the largest municipal housing developments in post-war England and dramatically changed the character of the northern Havant area, transforming farmland and the grounds of the former Leigh Park House into a residential district housing tens of thousands of people. The estate has a regular layout of semi-detached houses, terraces and low-rise flats, with green spaces, schools and community facilities built in from the start. Leigh Park has faced the social and economic challenges common to large post-war estates, including deprivation, unemployment and a negative reputation that does not always reflect the reality of life for its residents. Community organisations, the Leigh Park Community Centre, and local schools work to support the area. The Staunton Country Park, on the estate's northern edge, provides access to parkland and woodland and is one of the best green spaces in the borough.