West Green | |
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St Peter's Church |
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West Green shown within West Sussex | |
Population | 4,404 |
OS grid reference | TQ265375 |
District | |
Shire county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | CRAWLEY |
Postcode district | RH11 |
Dialling code | 01293 |
Police | Sussex |
Fire | West Sussex |
Ambulance | South East Coast |
EU Parliament | South East England |
UK Parliament | |
West Green is one of the 13 residential neighbourhoods in Crawley, a town and borough in West Sussex, England. Crawley was planned and laid out as a New Town after the Second World War, based on the principle of self-contained neighbourhoods surrounding a town centre of civic and commercial buildings. West Green was the first neighbourhood to be developed, and is one of the smallest and closest to the town centre.
West Green is a roughly triangular area of 123 hectares (300 acres), bounded by the Arun Valley railway line to the south, the A23 (Crawley Avenue) to the west and north, and the High Street to the east. The latter formed part of the main London to Brighton road until it was bypassed in the 1930s.Northgate and the town centre lie to the east, Southgate is to the south, Ifield is to the west and Langley Green shares a border to the north.
When the New Town was planned, each neighbourhood was allocated a colour, which appears on street name signs together with the neighbourhood's name. West Green's colour is dark blue.
A small settlement developed in the Anglo-Saxon era around a crossroads where a northeast–southwest trackway connecting the main Saxon-era estates and farms of the Weald crossed an east–west route between Worth and Ifield. After the Norman Conquest, the pattern of land use and travel changed, and a new north-south route between London and the south coast developed slightly to the east. Crawley, originally a small village itself, grew around this from the 13th century onwards. The two settlements, 0.25 miles (0.4 km) apart, grew slowly alongside each other for the next few centuries. The name "West Green" was first recorded in 1532.