This view of the corner of High Street and Chantry Street was taken by Charles Wardell in 1967.

The double-fronted shop had been the premises of Cox the cobbler since the 1940s and before that another cobbler, Charles Wise, had traded there.

So often in earlier days, although proprietors may have changed, the type of business stayed the same.

Just above the facing front door is a plaque which reads ‘Stanley Cottages 1898’, while lower down and to the right is the white-painted SWS which stands for Static Water Supply, an indication during the Second World War that here was a source of water not reliant upon the piped mains.

If the town was bombed and the supply interrupted, other means of finding water could have been vital, for fighting fires or indeed just for drinking and ancillary purposes.

In this case the SWS was a well in the back garden.

There were many of these in the yards and gardens of urban old Andover long after the advent of piped water.

The wartime SWS letters were still easily visible on the fronts of older houses well into the 1970s and with an eagle eye, examples may still be found today.

As can be seen, car parking was still free in Andover in 1967 and it was not until a year or two after decimalisation in 1971 that charges came in.

However, those 1950s and ‘60s car parks were not the well-laid out areas that they are today. Some were no more than rough ground of stones, rubble and weeds where demolished buildings left a vacant site or where there was an accessible back yard or other plot of ground that had come into the control of the council.

Increasing demand for car parking made that rather ad hoc situation insufficient, remedied by town development that enabled new purpose-built car parks to be laid out.

Looking further back down the High Street beyond Cox’s, there was a surviving house that had never been shop premises and, when built around 1840-50, would have been reasonably prestigious.

In 1895, dressmaker Elizabeth Edwards lived there, to be followed by widow Frances Mist who let out apartments.

By 1939, it was home to the Turner family and remained in their occupation until the early 1970s after which it was demolished.

The gap between the Turner’s house and George Clark’s book shop at No 101 was the Eagle yard.

This once served the Eagle inn that was in Chantry Street but the pub itself had been burned down in 1903 and replaced by two houses (now Eagleside House flats).

By the 1930s the yard had become WV Moore’s scrap yard and a 1940 advert reveals that, as well as scrap metal, the proprietor gave the ‘best prices for rabbit skins and rags’ and was a contractor to the government.

Under V H Moore, the scrapyard continued there until the late 1960s after which the yard was permanently barred by metal gates.

Cox’s moved to 6 Union Street when the new shops were built there in 1968 and their old shop became a branch of Oxfam for a few years before it was all demolished in the mid 1970s.

In new buildings, Oscar’s Wine Bar occupied the corner site for a number of years, but it is now the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant.

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