A THOROUGHFARE with an especially chequered past is Simnel Street, Southampton, which has run the full gamut of prosperity and poverty in its time.

It reached its lowest ebb in the 19th century, when it was one of the most run-down and dilapidated streets in the town — but also one of the most picturesque.

It was extremely narrow and its width at the junction with West Street was a mere 5ft 8in (1.7m). In one place ancient houses were only prevented from collapse by wooden beams which spanned the street just above head height. There were also various courts and alleys leading off the street.

“The later Simnel Street was a rookery,” wrote pre-war Echo history writer E A Mitchell. "The ordinary citizen seldom went down it, and never, if he could help it, after dark.

“For it consisted largely of a collection of common lodging houses whose occupants included some of the poorest and most notorious men and women in the town. And the Saturday night fights were sometimes alarming affairs.”

Simnel Street probably takes its name from the old French word “simenel”, meaning fine flour. There was a windmill in this part of Southampton in the Middle Ages.

Simnel cakes have a similar name origin.

In medieval and Tudor times the street was synonymous more with prosperity than poverty. Many eminent or well-to-do people lived there, including Richard the Arblaster in the 14th century.

Tangible evidence of Simnel Street luxury was uncovered in 1976 on the site of a medieval tenement.

Archaeologists found a large quantity of Italian and Dutch glassware and pottery including fragments of 90 Venetian glass vessels decorated with gold leaf and coloured enamel.

Victorian Simnel Street still had many houses built by Elizabethans, some with great beams of centuries-old oak or chestnut.

Most of the older houses were very dark inside.

They were also over-occupied. An official report in 1894 revealed a population density of 441.4 people per acre in the Simnel Street area compared to just 14.5 in Portswood.

The report led to slum clearance and redevelopment in the late 1890s.

The ruins yielded many interesting finds including the remains of a medieval mural and some fine medieval stonework and woodwork.

“Behind the plaster of the walls and ceilings of these ancient rooms there were often portions not only of tree trunks but of the branches, with their smaller branches and twigs, interlaced and strengthened to support the plaster, on the same principle on which hurdles are made,” wrote Mitchell.