DURING the long period when Southampton was still girdled by its ancient walls it boasted of a lofty Watchtower.

This stood just to the south-east of the Water Gate, which was at the bottom of the High Street and led on to the quay wall.

According to the history books this gate had “two lyons in tymber” to guard its seaward side.

The tower was aptly named for it seems to have projected well forward from the line of the walls so commanding a good view of the waterway.

It was manned by watchers and doubly so in days of apprehension and danger of attack. Such threats, however, gradually receded with the changing of times and the mighty walls fell into partial decay.

The high towers and some of the gates were neglected and in 1804 the fine Water Gate itself was pulled down as being ruinous.

The usual dire accusation was levelled against it... “it got in the way of the traffic” and so it had to go and doubtless the Watch Tower shared its fate about that time.

On the base of the Watchtower the old Sun Hotel was built. That this house still fulfilled something of the former function of the tower is shown by a photograph taken in 1890 and which is shown here.

The view is from the Town Quay looking up the High Street, unrecognisable today, but at the door of the Sun Hotel the photograph shows a man scanning the water with a telescope who can just be made out on the extreme right hand side.

Was it hotel property for the benefit of customers or did it belong to the stocky old man leaning against the railings, and perhaps letting it out at “a penny a peep”?

What did the telescope reveal? Was the watcher looking at the chugging, sturdy little Hythe boat ferrying its passengers into the Quay?

Ice boat Perhaps he was watching the manoeuvres of some Norwegian barque known as an “ice boat” bringing its cargo of ice all the way from Scandinavia.

They were a feature of Town Quay life and used to come in regularly until a few years after the First World War.

There was a time when many local people could remember the flat carts being driven up the High Street and laden with huge blocks of ice leaving little trickles of water from their loads on the way to a fishmonger.

On the day this Victorian photograph was taken, the patient cab horses, on the left, await passengers from the boats.

The ice cream vendor, on the far left of the scene, alongside his unhygienic-looking contraption is waiting for customers.

Who is the man in the smart white suit standing outside the Sun Hotel but, above all, who is that old bearded sailor, standing in the middle of the road, looking so distrustfully at the camera?

Could it have been “Old Baccy”, the quay boatman about whom stories were handed from former generations of local people?