Leigham

Leigh more often than not derives from one of the more frequently occurring place-name elements - the old-English "leah".

The original meaning of this was "an open place in a wood, a part in a wood with the trees scattered so that grass can grow". In English place names though there are generally two variants; one is "an open space in a wood, glade" and is also used to cover "meadow and pasture land" the other means somewhat contradictorily "wood or forest".

Leigham matched its name well until the 1960s - up until the housing and industrial estates were begun it had changed little since the Domesday survey which recorded it as being a manor with two farms and eight acres of wood and three of meadow.