This is the second part of the piece on Andover vicarages. The first part was published in last week’s edition and online last weekend.

Local historian Arthur Bennett, writing in the 1930s, pinpoints a building that in a document of 1766 was called the Old Vicarage, sited between the churchyard wall and Newbury Street, opposite today’s Priory Lodge.

He says it was commonly called Rats Castle but whether he is repeating Laura Ridding’s description or whether it was called that in 1766 is unclear.

If Bennett’s observations are accurate, this suggests that even in 1766 the building was no longer a working vicarage and rented out.

The date fits quite well as, before Ridding’s arrival, Andover’s last resident vicar was Jonathan Alleyne who died in 1762.

A succession of absentee vicars followed over the next 73 years, before Charles Ridding was appointed in 1835.

Bennett also writes: ‘the building was pulled down in 1847 and the site has recently been converted into a pleasance’.

This is the same date that the adjacent grammar school buildings were pulled down on the western side of New Street and the entire site of both school and supposed vicarage then became a shrubbery, owned by Martha Gale.

She might well have acquired any earlier vicarage site, after her uncle had bequeathed his house for that purpose and certainly did acquire the old school site in exchange for providing a new location, where the present museum now stands.

The shrubbery area is partly shown in the 1946 picture above, by then long cleared of any Victorian shrubs.

The year 1847 was evidently a time of demolitions as that was also when Priory House met its end.

All connect up as a series of Martha Gale-engineered land swaps which enabled the redoubtable lady to fulfil a number of intended philanthropic improvements to Victorian Andover, taking her inspiration from the work of her beloved late uncle.

In tandem, the view from both the window of her uncle’s old house and from Priory Lodge next door, to where she moved after his death, was perfect for admiring new St Mary’s in all its neo-Gothic splendour.

After Charles Ridding, a succession of vicars took up their rightful place at Dr Goddard’s old residence until the departure of Revd Patrick Morrell in 1939.

His successor Revd Fletcher lived at 6 Alexandra Road, perhaps through personal preference, but in 1953 a new vicarage was built on land in New Street, opposite today’s museum.

The Newbury Street vicarage was sold to Philip Singer who after the war carried out alterations to enable some of the rooms to be rented out.

About 1950, the arcade of shops with flats above, named Swan Court, was built in the large rear garden.

After reading an earlier article about the supposed tunnels under East street, a correspondent wrote to tell me that she and her husband had lived in rooms at the Old Vicarage in 1959, while waiting for their new bungalow to be finished.

She recalled that in the coal cellar was a bricked-up archway just like the ones at East Street and Mr Singer had said that it was for the clergy to access St Mary’s church opposite.

But of course, the vicarage in Newbury Street had only been so since 1845, long after the period of clandestine worship; and in any case, there was no need for the Established Church to use tunnels to reach their places of worship; if underground tunnels had any religious purpose at all, it was for the passage of nonconformists, who were the ones persecuted.

Speculation about the whys and wherefores of tunnels can be endless, as can the tunnels themselves and cellars are often much older than the building that stands above them, having survived the demolition of previous buildings standing on the same site.

In the record office at Winchester is a mortgage deed, dated 1699, for the White Horse and lands, that is claimed to have once stood on the same site as the Old Vicarage and who knows what may have stood there before that.

In those days, Newbury Street was London Lane, being the main route to London and so this was an ideal place for an inn, where traffic would pass by the door.

However, by the 1750s, a new London route was established at the bottom of the High Street and this may have been the reason for the demise of the inn and a new house built on the same site.

Architecturally, the Old Vicarage could easily fit that time-frame.

Coming back up to date, many will remember The Coffee House, established by Mr Singer at the east side of the Old Vicarage.

In the 1960s it became Wickhams restaurant, run by Walter Bernard, which he subsequently re-named The Keys.

By this time, the adjacent Old Vicarage had become the premises of professional business.

First, it was the accountants Knowles and Barron, followed by estate agents Strutt and Parker and finally the solicitors Trethowan and Bullen.

The latter practice is still there today as Parker Bullen and the old restaurant now incorporates additional offices.

Rightly, the building was given a Grade II listing in 1983 and looks particularly attractive today, having recently been painted.