Hampshire Heritage

WITH PIX TO COME

In their time the buildings on this page played a vital role in the everyday life of Southampton, but sadly no more.

The ornate Grand Theatre, which once stood at West Marlands, was opened in 1898 and was reached and was reached by way of Aslatt's Cut, a narrow passageway which ran from Above Bar, opposite where the Clock Tower used to stand at the junction with New Road.

For more than half a century this was Southampton favourite public building. Here, in the warm, intimate atmosphere of Southampton's own playhouse, audiences applauded names of many of the country's leading players including Irving, Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, Forbes-Robertson, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Martin Harvey, Fred Terry and Julia Neilson and Matheson Land.

Following sucessful inter-war years of repertory, the theatre declined after the Second World War, closed its doors in 1959 and was demolished two years later.

Before the mid-1930s a visitor to Southampton who strolled up the main streets would have been charmed, as he reached the area around the Clock Tower, to discover between the shops and offices an oasis of trim lawns and graceful trees together with an elegant two-storey red-brick building, its walls clad in creeper.

To its south ran Aslatt's Cut and to the north, the equally narrow Gibbs Road. The building was Thorner's Charity Almshouse, built in 1787 and made possible by a request of Robert Thorner, a London businessman who, on retirement, settled in North Baddesley and became a faithful member of the congregation at the Above Bar Congregational Church.

The almshouse, for more than a century and a half, became a resting place for "deserving and indigent widows". However, with the construction of the Civic Centre it was decided that this beautiful old building had to be demolished as part of the redevelopment.

Opened in 1863, Southampton's first purpose-built library and art gallery stood at the junction of London Road and Cumberland Place. Here, almost 100 years earlier, New Place House, a notable three-storey mansion set in extensive grounds, had been built.

During the 18th century the property had changed hands several times, and, after the demolition of the mansion, the site was acquired by Southampton Corporation.

A new building with the library on the ground floor and a staircase led to the tiny art gallery and according to the history books the librarian was most pleased to move from the town's earlier public library which, housed in two rooms above a stable in St. Mary Street, had been "at the mercy of the louts of the neighbourhood".

In the late 1930s the library and art gallery found a new home in the Civic Centre and the old building became a victim of enemy bombing during 1940.

The imposing gothic grandeur of the old Royal Southampton Yacht Club was built during the 1880s at the junction of Above Bar and Ogle Road. After surviving the Second World War it was later demolished to make way for new commercial buildings.

Another building that became a local landmark was the Sussex Hotel, which stood at the entrance of the long forgotten Sussex Terrace almost opposite Ogle Road.

The dignitaries in this photograph, thought to have been taken in about 1898, were inspecting underground ducts being laid across Above Bar towards Ogle Road as part of the preparation for the installation of electricity to power the trams.