This intriguing photograph comes from David Howard’s collection and shows the Junction Hotel, now demolished, which stood in what is now Station Approach but was earlier the northern end of Junction Road.

Logically, the hotel was built for rail passengers at that very convenient spot, but although the railway reached Andover from London in 1854, the term ‘junction’ would not have been used until at least 1865 when the line to Southampton was linked to it.

Directories of the 1865-71 period do list a Railway Inn with John Penfold and William Brockway as successive licensees, and this would be the future Junction Hotel.

A change of name was sensible as there were by then two other inns with ‘railway’ in their titles – the Railway Tavern and the New Railway Inn.

Proprietors of the hotel when this photograph was taken were John William Rennie and his wife Philadelphia who had come from London with their three sons, around 1908 and one guesses that these are the two elder people either side of the housemaid.

The advertising on the wall shows that they were selling May and Co’s ales and stout, a Basingstoke brewery which owned the building.

Sadly, the various Andover breweries were by this time either defunct or in the process of selling up.

The occasion, given the flags, suggests celebrations for the end of World War I. We usually date the first annual carnival procession to 1924, instituted to raise funds for the Andover War Memorial Hospital, but undoubtedly there were earlier parades where vehicles were hired for people to dress up and to take part in some sort of celebratory event.

What were the Bibendum twins? It is no coincidence that they bear a stark resemblance to the Michelin Man; the name is taken from the Roman poet Horace’s ‘Nunc est bibendum’, meaning ‘now is the time to drink’, with the character dating from the 1890s when the Michelin brothers adopted a design by a French cartoonist as the company mascot.

In those days, there were the additions of pince-nez spectacles as well as a cigar.

The Michelin Man is still going strong but the association of drinking and smoking with motoring has certainly been curtailed.

The Rennies hired out motor vehicles, perhaps with driver if required, and what was once inn stabling, was converted to garaging when motoring became popular.

Whether they, the brewery or a third party owned the vehicles is not known.

The Ford Model T outside, with its AA number-plate shows that it was registered in Hampshire and pre-dates October 1917, when a third letter was added.

Perhaps vehicles were easier than horses: during the Andover riots of 1914, the horses for the mounted police who stormed the local rioters were stabled at the Junction Hotel and on the Sunday after the police had done their work in the High Street a deputation of the more militant Andoverians marched to the hotel and forced Rennie to remove them.

By allowing the horses to be stabled there, the hotel keeper (an incomer too!) was blamed for helping the police.

John Rennie died in 1921 and the business was continued by his widow and eldest son. Today, the site is occupied by a small housing development that, in its brick and flint construction, pleasantly suggests the style of older buildings around the town.

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