Many older residents will remember Plummers, shown here at No 5 Bridge Street, which is now The Redbridge bar and restaurant.
As the signs in the three windows advertise, the shop sold curtains, carpets and linens but was also known for ladies’ and children’s fashions.
The firm was actually Plummer Roddis, which started in the 19th century at Hastings and then opened large stores in Portsmouth, Southampton and several other south-coast branches before being bought by Debenhams in 1928.
The new owners retained the old name for the Plummer Roddis branches and continued to open a few new shops during the World War II period.
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The building itself looks early 19th century, but an earlier structure on the site was The Three Choughs inn, mentioned in a document of 1624 and also known simply as The Choughs or ‘Ye Choffs’.
One of the final innkeepers was John Cockrum, who changed its name to The Three Blackbirds before 1792.
Cockrum was also a tailor and it may have been a natural progression to become a draper’s shop under one Edward Bishop Hawkins, who was born in Cranford, Middlesex, in 1806.
Later advertisements claim the business to have been founded in 1827, which may coincide with the demolition of the old inn.
Certainly by 1841, Edward Bishop Hawkins was running the shop, listed in the census of that year as a linen draper with three young children, and also living there were three men who worked on the premises.
One of these was described simply as ‘shopman’, another was a journeyman linen draper (from the French for ‘day’, meaning he could charge his services at a daily rate), and the third was an apprentice draper.
Living in also were three women domestic servants.
Then only 35, Hawkins was already a widower but remarried in 1849.
Partnerships evolved over the next 50 years, becoming successively Hawkins and Son, Hawkins and Clarke, Clarke and Harris, and then, on the retirement of John Harris, solely W Percival Clarke, who was the son of the former Clarke partner.
William Percival Clarke was to run the shop for almost 50 years and it was a rather high-class establishment.
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If so, it was short-lived as by 1915, a second shop was opened at No 2 Bridge Street.
This is the corner shop that was to become Burden’s tobacconist’s and is now a nail bar.
That seems a small shop for a gentleman’s outfitters but possibly the upstairs rooms were used as well.
Sometime between 1920 and 1923, the gents’ outfitting business moved along to No 16 Bridge Street, among the run of premises built forward of the former street line, between the White Hart and the Wesleyan Methodist church.
That shop remained there long after the main establishment closed, finally shutting in January 1973.
The parent shop was the setting for a legal drama in November 1906 when 26-year-old draper’s assistant Robert Cordwent was arrested for systematic theft of shop stock over a period of some six months.
During the hearing before the borough bench, it emerged that Cordwent had arrived at W Percival Clarke’s in June 1905 and lived-in above the shop.
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His duties included opening the shop each morning and letting in the porters responsible for deliveries.
As such, he was always around in the shop premises before the outside staff came in.
As an employee, he could claim a trade discount for goods and he seems to have engaged himself in a legitimate business sending shop merchandise to his brother in Somerset.
However, his position at Andover meant that opportunities presented themselves and temptation got the better of him.
He started to steal when there was nobody around to see what he was doing.
As before, goods were packaged up and sent to the Junction Station for transport to his brother Hubert at The Elms, Wellington, in Somerset.
From there it went to a Mrs Fanny Gater of Pylesthorne, Wellington, a labourer’s wife who worked in a factory for 12s a week.
She sold much of it on to her factory colleagues.
At Andover, Cordwent frequently got an under-porter, William Maslen, to take parcels to the station, saying it was a delivery to a customer, but he became suspicious because there was always some degree of secrecy about these tasks.
Sometimes the parcels came from the shop itself and sometimes from the back near Cordwent’s bedroom.
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Young Maslen, on being given successive parcels, was often told not to let the head-porter see him going or not to let ‘old Walker (an assistant) see you pass the shop.’
It was usually early and Maslen said his station errands were between seven and eight o’clock in the morning, being paid 6d or 1/- by Cordwent for his trouble.
However, Cordwent came to him one day and said, ‘I shall not want you to take many more parcels as I am getting the stuff to get a business of my own.’
The parcels taken by Maslen to the station and bound for Wellington were always unaddressed and the parcel master at the station said that Cordwent came up later with the address labels.
Proprietor William Percival Clarke recalled that some months before he had asked about a pair of curtains displayed in the shop and was told by Cordwent that they had been sold to a particular customer. In truth, they had gone to Somerset.
Eventually, on 10 November, the police were called in and Sgt Bowles accused Cordwent of sending a parcel containing stolen goods the night before and asked how he accounted for it.
Cordwent immediately pleaded guilty and revealed the whole story.
The police then went to Somerset to both The Elms and to Pylesthorne and recovered a whole host of goods, including quilts, blankets, linen, dress materials, silks, muslins and curtains, including those recalled by Mr Clarke, all of which together came to a value of over £90.
Although both Cordwent’s brother and Mrs Gater were accused of receiving stolen goods, they were able to claim that they had no inkling the goods were stolen; indeed, from their point of view a legitimate business had been set up between the three of them whereby materials from Andover, supposedly bought at a trade discount from the shop, were re-sold in Somerset.
Evidence was produced that showed Robert Cordwent had done the same thing at a previous employment at Hooper’s drapery in Bridgwater, but here the transactions were genuine, receipts being produced to the court that proved legitimate.
This was believed and was enough to enable the two ‘accomplices’ to be discharged.
However, Cordwent himself was committed for trial at Winchester where the case was heard again.
His defence barrister, who had represented him the week before at Andover, said that the family in Somerset were ‘highly respected’ and his father had offered to pay the whole cost of restitution to Mr Clarke.
The judge, seems to have been unusually sympathetic, saying, ‘I suppose he was simply hastening to get rich; not an uncommon thing.’
Because full restitution of the value was on offer, Cordwent was sentenced to 12 months’ hard labour; the report of the trial recording that he was about to start business in Tiverton, having entered into a contract to take over a drapery business there.
Cordwent possibly underestimated how widely his misdeeds would be reported in the West Country and the Tiverton enterprise almost certainly never happened.
In 1908, he married Constance Maddocks at Kettering and by 1911, he had become a dairyman in Clacton, Essex, with two children.
Ten years later he was back in Wellington as a dairy farmer in his own right and in 1939, just after the war broke out, he is recorded at Shepton Mallet, still dairy farming and also an ARP warden.
Eventually he returned to Wellington, where he died in 1966.
If you are interested in local history, why not join Andover History and Archaeology Society? Details can be found at andoverlocalhistoryarchaeology.uk.
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