Last week’s picture showed Western Road looking down towards Bridge Street.

Out of sight, on the left of that view, was this building that by 1937 had become the Andover and District Conservative Club.

Today it stands behind a line of hoarding in Western Road but this is a photograph taken from the road around 1910 by Browne and Gradidge.

It was originally called Wykeham House and, in a nod to its past history, latterly became the Wykeham Club, when staunch Conservative affiliations were not strong enough to keep it going.

However, it remained under the same ownership.

The building dates from 1900 or so.

Before that there was little on this side of the road west of The Knoll - later the Central Hotel – where Junction Road enters Bridge Street.

I am guessing that Thomas Lynn the ironmonger bought up some land in this area and built the house (one of his sons, Harry Lynn, lived at another house called Lyndhurst for many years, which was nearby).

Certainly, there exists evidence of a conveyance in 1901 whereby Thomas Lynn sold Wykeham House to Miss Amy Elizabeth Reynolds who started a girls’ school there.

Miss Reynolds was one of the daughters of currier Edward Reynolds whose premises were at 89-91 High Street.

She was born in 1869 and, after gaining a BA London qualification, became the headmistress of an earlier Andover Girls High School in West Street in 1894.

This was at Portland House, which at that period was owned by George Vivian Poore, an eminent and perhaps eccentric doctor who spent most of his life in London and had a practice in Wimpole Street.

Poore was a son of the local brewing family and had made good - one of his many roles being medical attendant to Queen Victoria’s youngest son Leopold who was stricken with haemophilia.

On his retirement, he returned to Portland House in Andover, and this was no doubt why Miss Reynolds moved the school to Wykeham House; the dates fit almost exactly.

At some point Amy was joined by her elder sister Charlotte and both taught at the Wykeham House school, though Charlotte remained at the family address in the High Street and did not live-in until much later.

In 1911, the school’s permanent occupants, apart from Amy Reynolds, included two English mistresses, a housekeeper and four boarders.

Of the latter, two were student teachers aged 17 and 14 and the two others were pupils, aged eight and six.

There was a kindergarten element to the school which included boys.

The Reynolds’ connection with the school seems to have lasted until about 1925, after which the two sisters both returned to the High Street house.

Amy died at the relatively early age of 59 in 1929 and we could speculate that ill-health caused her to retire from the school.

It continued under Mrs Ellen Sarah Gibbs from 1926 but the building was put up for sale three years later, on instructions of Hampshire County Council; as the local education authority, they may have taken charge at some point.

Mrs Gibbs remained in residence as a private occupier until at least 1935, after which it became the Andover and District Conservative Club, followed by the Wykeham Club until permanent closure in 2014.