This 1967 view of Henly’s garage in Bridge Street was taken by Charles Wardell.

Standing on the same site today are the vacant premises of Sainsbury’s, a building that replaced this one about 40 years ago and already looking drab and dated.

Looking at the roof line, Henly’s was clearly two buildings originally.

The one to the right is adjacent to Town Station Yard which in the 19th century was home to coal and stone yards, as well as the municipal gasworks.

Here too, from 1789 until 1859 was the entrance to the Andover-Redbridge canal.

Cyril Berry tells us in his book Old Andover, that this building was once called Wharf House, so it seems reasonable to assume it dates from the days of the canal.

The canal itself was never a profitable enterprise and directories of the period say little about it but in Slater’s 1852 directory there is a mention of wharfinger Samuel Brignall of Bridge Street, who would have overseen canal transport, so perhaps Wharf House was where he lived.

By 1861 the canal had gone and a carriage manufactory was sited at this end of Bridge Street. Wharf House was still a private residence where the works proprietor Herbert Stride lived.

He had moved his business premises from Winchester Street after the canal closed.

At Bridge Street, it became a sizable concern which employed nine men and four boys and this continued under his son Herbert Arthur Stride until the early 20th century.

By then carriages were giving way to the new form of motor transport and by 1907 the business of Henry Pratt Moore, previously at 31 High Street, had moved in.

Like the elder Stride, Pratt Moore himself was of an earlier generation who had trained as a coach and harness maker but his son, Robert Thomas Moore, who by now was running his late father’s business, traded as a coach builder and motor agent.

Soon however, the coaches were gone completely, as motor cars were now where the money was, and it was called Moore’s Garage.

During Moore’s time, the old Wharf House was still separate but the basic form of the adjacent business premises was the same as in the Wardell photograph.

Maybe it dated back to the coachbuilding past, as a wide, arched entrance would have been ideal for large carriages to pass through.

Architecturally, it is difficult to date as we can see elements of that neo-Palladian style in other buildings in Andover from the Guildhall of 1825 to Lloyd’s bank of 1921.

Around 1922, Moore’s Garage became Wessex Motors.

Petrol pumps were installed by 1930 in front of the former Wharf House front door and the earlier archway was glassed in to provide a showroom.

However, it was not until 1962 that the more radical alteration of a second archway, which took away some of the ground floor of the house, was built.

For this the architects Henshaw, Cheek and Butterell were employed, truly fusing the two buildings together.

By this time Wessex Motors was part of the Henly group and the former name was gradually phased out.

Despite the extensive re-building, it seems that the Bridge Street location lasted only until 1975, after which Henly’s moved to the former site of Sparshatt’s car dealership at 278 Weyhill Road.

After several ‘false dawns’ a supermarket was built on the old site, first occupied by Safeway’s and then Sainsbury’s.