For generations, Andover’s Chantry Shopping Centre has been a familiar part of the town centre. But the land beneath its walkways and shops has a history stretching back long before the centre opened.
Chantry Street is one of Andover’s oldest roads. An archive photograph taken around 1910 shows a scene today’s residents would barely recognise. Every building in the picture has since disappeared.
Buildings from different periods lined the street, showing how it had evolved over the years. One of the most prominent was Alpha Place, a three-storey terrace built in the mid-Victorian period.
Elsewhere stood a thatched cottage. The Advertiser’s history column said it had stood for around 300 years. It showed how older buildings stood alongside later homes and businesses.
Chantry Street was also a busy trading street. Grocer Emily Wise ran her business there until the mid-1920s. Italian trader Alphonso Mattia ran a second-hand goods shop in the street.
The street lights offered another glimpse of the era. In the early 20th century, the Andover Lighting and Power Company supplied gas to the street lamps.
Andover’s gas company was established in 1838. Electricity did not arrive locally until 1926, so gas remained vital to daily life.
Much of old Chantry Street vanished during Andover’s redevelopment in the 1960s. Demolition followed as the town was reshaped.
Some buildings survived the redevelopment for longer. Two premises stayed in use before eventually becoming Oxfam shops.
The Chantry Shopping Centre was part of the wider redevelopment. It opened in 1970, starting a new chapter in the site’s history.
Even the original centre would be hard for many people to recognise today. Before its 1990 refurbishment, it was described as “open to the elements”.
The refurbishment added a glass roof. It transformed the shopping area and sheltered visitors.
Irene Chambers, who lived near Andover, photographed the centre before its redevelopment. She regularly photographed places facing major change.
Her pictures preserved the shopping centre before its transformation. They also captured one stage in Chantry Street’s long transformation.
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The area has changed repeatedly, from centuries-old cottages and Victorian terraces to a shopping centre and its later refurbishment.
Chantry Street’s history shows how dramatically this familiar part of Andover has changed. Today’s shops and walkways stand where homes, businesses and gas lamps once shaped the street.
The six-house Alpha Place terrace was demolished in 1970, and its former site is now part of the public car park.
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