From the Jolly Farmer to the Western Café in Bridge Street

Despite a uniform rooftop, the first-floor windows are unevenly placed and each section is not quite flush with its neighbour.

Today, the frontage has been ‘ironed’ out and given a uniform façade, with a ground-floor doorway to the upper floor added beneath the gable.

The skylights have been removed from the roof, which has been newly tiled.

Toyland, The Pottery Shop and the Western Café, Bridge Street, c.1965. (Image: Charles Wardell)

Unsurprisingly in the course of 60 years, all the businesses in this photograph have gone; today, Frango Grill and Shish occupy the two left-hand premises and Seamaster Fish and Chips, the right.

Any child of the 1950s and 1960s will well remember Toyland as a haven for the latest toys, a competitor to Miss Pearse’s in the upper High Street.

Toyland and The Pottery Shop linked up inside and may have been connected businesses, as both shops first opened around 1948 and closed some 20 years later.

But the point of focus this week is the third building to the right; in 1965 called the Western, a bakery and restaurant, according to the signboard.

Bridge Street, during the 18th and 19th centuries, was home to a large number of various hotels and inns.

Large establishments such as the Catherine Wheel, the Bush and the White Hart, were augmented by smaller alehouses and licensed houses – the Three Choughs, the Ship, the Crystal Fountain, the New Inn and the Eight Bells.

To add to the list is the building that later became the Western (Café), then called the Jolly Farmer.

In 1795 Charles Heath bought the inn – in all likelihood a going concern – but there is no Jolly Farmer listed in either the 1784 Hampshire Directory or the Andover section of the 1793 Universal Directory.

It could have been called something else; one possible name is the Crown and Cushion, a 1793 entry whose whereabouts is not known.

The principal members of the Heath family were Quaker bankers and brewers and, as the Andover Brewery, operated from premises at the bottom of London Street.

As one generation followed another, enthusiasm for the brewing business died out and when the brewery was sold up in 1847, an auction catalogue was produced of the various licensed premises up for sale, all to be auctioned by 'Mr Mason of Bucklersbury at the White Hart Inn'.

Very helpfully, the catalogue includes details of the various inns purchased by Heath’s and in most cases a map of each of the premises.

Some of the more important coaching inns, such as the White Hart and the Catherine Wheel, failed to sell – perhaps buyers perceived that the coaching business was at an end – but most of the cheaper properties found buyers, with the Jolly Farmer fetching £250.

The inn offered accommodation for travellers, though there was no rear stabling.

A long narrow garden at the back was set out as a skittle yard, while inside there were two attic bedrooms and four on the first floor, all above a bar, tap room, parlour and cellars.

At the time of the auction, the landlord was Elias Kerley and he continued as the tenant afterwards but died in 1850.

New landlord John Warwick took it over but he died in 1860 and that seems to be the end of the Jolly Farmer.

Between 1860 and 1901, the former inn was occupied by a variety of traders who may or may not have kept a shop.

In the 1860s and ’70s, it was the home of coal merchant James Banks whose business premises would have been at Town Station Yard.

Later on, his widow stayed on at Bridge Street as a 'house proprietor', earning her income from renting out houses.

The couple’s daughter Rosa would later marry Walter Layton and become proprietress of the china and glass warehouse, Layton’s, behind the Guildhall.

By 1881 painter and decorator William Turner was living there.

He later became Mayor of Andover (1908) and a large oil portrait of him, painted by his daughter, hangs in the council chamber of the Guildhall.

The final occupiers during the 1890s were bootmaker Charles Withers, followed by baker George Pearce.

The 1901 census shows the building vacant but soon afterwards, it became part of the Andover Co-operative Society’s new premises.

At that time, it was just getting off the ground.

The first shop was in New Street but this soon proved insufficient and in October 1901 the society moved to Bridge Street.

Here, the Co-op took two adjacent shops and did so well that it was decided to build a new store (on the opposite side of the road) on the site of a former vet’s practice, called Bridge House.

Plans were given to the builders Beale’s at the beginning of 1909 and the new building opened some six months later in July 1909, leaving both the old shops awaiting new tenants.

The now long-forgotten Jolly Farmer was subsequently taken by Walter T Portsmouth, a baker and pastry cook who opened the premises as 'refreshment rooms', probably just under his own name.

The family lived above the shop and there were three children.

He must have been successful as it continued to operate for many years, with his wife Edith as part of the business.

Walter died in 1927 and his widow continued to run it.

By 1934, it was known as the Western Café.

Although Edith continued to head the business during the 1930s, it is probable that her son Walter William (Bill) took on an increasing role.

He married in 1934 and moved to Humberstone Road but it may have been his idea to re-name the premises the Western Café and expand its business model.

Bill Portsmouth was a popular figure and involved himself in the various social activities of the town - the cricket club, the Conservative club and the grammar school Old Boys’ Association, as well as being a founder member of Andover Rotary Club.

Bill’s first wife died young in 1944 and he then married one of his wife’s friends, Miss Violet Clark, a former carnival queen.

In 1950, they took on the Red House at Whitchurch, while continuing to run the Western Café in Andover.

From basic 'refreshment rooms', the café had become much more than a simple eating place: an advertisement that appeared in 1950 shows that it had become well-established for outside catering at weddings, fetes, dinners and dances.

The Bridge Street premises were sold by the Portsmouths in 1959, after which it continued as The Western, a bakery and restaurant under S F West Ltd, Western Catering Services.

As that, it ran on until its final closure as a café in the mid-1970s.

By then the centre of town had well and truly moved away from Bridge Street to the new Town Centre precinct and despite constant calls from the Bridge Street traders for the council to attempt revitalisation of the area, most shoppers had already voted with their feet.

If you are interested in local history, why not join Andover History and Archaeology Society? Details can be found at andoverlocalhistoryarchaeology.uk.