Eastleigh Eastleigh Eastleigh is a town in Hampshire, England, between Southampton and Winchester in South Hampshire. It was originally developed as a railway town by the London and South-Western Railway. The town lies on the River Itchen, one of England's premier chalk streams for fly fishing, a designated site of Special Scientific Interest. The modern town of Eastleigh lies on the old Roman road, built in A.D.79 between Winchester "(Venta Belgarum)" and Bitterne "(Clausentum)". Roman remains discovered in the Eastleigh area, including a Roman lead coffin excavated in 1908, indicate that a settlement probably existed here in Roman times. A Saxon
Venta Belgarum east. Excavations of the cemetery were carried out by British archaeologist Julian Richards in 1998, and again in 2013, as part of the BBC television "Meet the Ancestors" series. From the mid-4th century, new development at Venta halted. Houses fell into disrepair and the drainage system collapsed. The population concentrated itself in the higher and drier areas of the town. The defences were however strengthened and the cemeteries remained in use, notably with burials of males wearing so-called military-style mercenary belts. Historian David Nash Ford identifies the community as the ("Fort Venta") listed by Nennius among the 28 cities of