"I always stay at Hogwarts for the Christmas and Easter holidays, and I don't ever want to go back to Privet Drive."
-- Harry Potter (PA3)
Privet Drive is a “perfectly ordinary” Muggle street in Little Whinging, Surrey, lined with boring, boxy houses. It is also, at number four, home to the Dursley family, as well as – for many years, at least – Harry Potter (PS2). A neighboring house is number seven (OP1).
Commentary
Notes
Rowling on Privet Drive:
The name of the street where the Dursleys live is a reference to that most suburban plant, the privet bush, which makes neat hedges around many English gardens. I liked the associations with both suburbia and enclosure, the Dursleys being so smugly middle class, and so determinedly separate from the wizarding world. The name of their area is ‘Little Whinging’, which again sounds appropriately parochial and sniffy, ‘whinging’ being a colloquial term for ‘complaining or whining’ in British English (Pm).