Andover looks very quiet in this 1965 view of the upper High Street, and probably the photograph was taken on a Sunday.

Normally, as well as people, there would be vehicles going back and forth as both High Street and Newbury Street were open to two-way traffic.

Here, just a sole Ford Anglia can be seen coming up alongside the then newly-opened Carr’s baby shop at No 84.

Carr’s original shop is on the other side of the street where the two policemen are walking, but a new addition is the name ‘Carr’s Corner’ painted high up on the building.

I suspect that this unofficial, but commonly-used term dates from the original shop’s corner where, from the 1930s, it was David Carr’s second-hand clothes shop and later, under Mark Carr, government surplus stock.

But now, Carr’s could justifiably claim both sides of the Newbury Street turning.

Curry’s cycle shop had only recently vacated the larger premises to join their other Andover branch at the more favourable location near the bottom of the High Street, where the firm gradually progressed to wholly electrical goods.

Heath’s, a ladies’ fashion shop, can be seen near the top of the street, next to Harvey’s with the striped sun canopies fully extended, suggesting that they were open.

As a newsagent, that would have been permitted, but most other shops in those days would be closed.

The Sunday trading laws continued to be a bone of contention right up until 1994 when the old laws with their anomalies of what could be bought on a Sunday and what could not, were finally repealed, against the long-held views of the Church of England who wanted its Sunday congregations and the trades unions who feared exploitation of workers.

Next to Harvey’s, we can see Wiltshire and Rimmer, another recent arrival in 1965.

During the 1950s the shop had been the premises of A E McGill and then briefly Nesta Electricals Ltd.

All of these were radio and television stockists and, as so often happened, the same premises were used for a similar type of business, despite changing hands several times.

Wiltshire and Rimmer were gone by the early 70s and replaced by British Relay, television rentals.

But that sort of continuing, commercial stability seems to have all but broken down today and an interesting debate could be had about the increasing dominance of the internet and the changing nature of British high streets, though perhaps the threads of change go back further than that.

To the left of the picture it is just possible to see Willis and Son, the most recent premises to be built in the upper High Street.

The two very old shops that stood there before were demolished in 1953 and the new building that replaced them was very much in the modern style, with a tiled triangular forecourt and a pair of angled front windows, each converging towards a pair of double entrance doors, set well back from the street.

The shop was run by Reginald Major, and he felt particularly aggrieved when town development plans were made public in 1961 and realised that his shop, then just eight years old, was to be bulldozed in order to make one of two pedestrian entrances to the new shopping precinct.

Local historians may have felt that was the best shop to choose but in the end of course most of that side of the street was lost.