This photograph is from another of David Howard’s postcards, posted in 1908 but photographed by Frederick Pearse a few years earlier. It looks like a period of prolonged heat with a lot of stock displayed outside. High up, some robust-looking canopies are supported on folding frames but beneath these some more makeshift - and somewhat bedraggled - sheeting gives extra protection from the strong sunshine. Unfortunately for those of us interested in the detail of what Andover was like 120 years ago, they only serve to obliterate what we should like to see!

To the far right are the railings of what was then a rather smart private house, belonging to the Clark family who ran the grocery shop next door farther down the street. Next, at No 56, are the premises of Harry William Burden. Living over the premises, he ran a fruit and fish shop when he first came to Andover and only later would move to the bottom of the High Street, where, mainly as a tobacconist’s and fishmonger’s, the family business would last for three generations. For some years this shop in the upper High Street was run in tandem with No 1 High Street, but by the 1920s these earlier premises were given up, possibly at the same time as the adjoining shop to No 1 High Street - which was No 2 Bridge Street - became vacant, allowing the Burdens to trade from the whole corner. Look above the shop windows today and clearly it is all one building.

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Harry’s son Reg was born in Jan 1899, and during the First World War he joined up as a rifleman in the 12th London Regt. However, at the end of 1915, the army found out that he was still only 16 years and 11 months, and consequently discharged. He may have joined up only shortly before that but many had flocked to the recruiting offices in the first weeks of the war in August 1914, ‘putting their age up’ to 18 in order to be part of an adventure that was expected to end by Christmas. Sent to the front line, many would have died long before their 18th birthday.

Further up the street with a projecting first-floor window was the ironmongery of Frank W Rogers. This later became Maurice Crang’s, a well-known Andover personality who had three successive High Street shops. His son, also Maurice, followed in the same business, continuing an ironmongery of this name until the 1950s. The elder Crang arrived in Andover just before World War I and I believe both he and his shop suffered because of his German-sounding name - though he was actually born in Somerset in 1870.

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Finally, for this week, the sign of Haskins at No 60 can be clearly seen with a young employee either having just retrieved a suit of clothes or about to hang them up. Charles Haskins was a Salisbury outfitter who, rather incongruously, also ran a china shop there.

Not so in Andover - Layton’s at 49 High Street was the dominant china business here - but there were two Haskins shops, almost opposite each other in the upper High Street, an outfitter’s and a separate boot and shoe shop. Haskins’ presence in Andover appears to last from about 1895 – 1907, when he retired. The clothier’s shop was taken over by Archie Fey and the boot and shoe shop by Carter the jeweller’s. Interestingly, the same W Carter and Sons operate from premises in Minster Street, Salisbury today, having occupied the same shop since 1817, just across the street from where Haskins’ Salisbury shop would also have been.