How the Other Half Lived – Weeke Within on the Eve of the Great War

Weeke during the 19th century

As the arrival of a wealthy social elite transformed the appearance of the ‘upper’, or northern, part of Weeke in the late 19th Century, a different type of development was taking place ‘down the hill’ in that area of the parish closest to Winchester city centre. Here, rather than the large, elegant houses set in spacious grounds which typified the new properties in Bereweeke Road and the top of Cheriton Road, streets of mainly terraced properties sprang up to cater for a predominantly working and lower middle class population.

This distinction was officially recognised in 1894 when Weeke parish was split into two – Weeke Within (the southern half) and Weeke Without. While the latter lies outside the city boundary of 1802, Weeke Within is inside. Its northern limit is marked by The Roebuck public house on the Stockbridge Road and it stretches on the east side as far as Andover Road, the western end of City Road and both sides of Sussex Street as far south as Newburgh Street, which, along with the northern half of Oram’s Arbour, Greenhill Road, and approximately along the line of Sarum Road, forms the southern boundary of the parish. The western boundary is mainly along the line of Lanham Lane off Sarum Road.

Before the second half of the 19th Century, much of what was to become Weeke Within was covered in orchards, market gardens, allotments and grazing areas. The arrival of the railway in Winchester in 1840 began the process of change, not only by dividing the southern part of Weeke parish in two but by encouraging the development of light industry and trade and commerce. The other major significant factor in the area’s development was the decision by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who owned much of the land on the western side of Winchester, to free it up for sale from the late 1850s.

From the 1870s, Weeke Within became part of the rapid development of Winchester’s western suburbs. Its growth mirrored that of Winchester as a whole. The city’s population more than doubled in the 19th Century – from 9,000 in 1837 to 23,500 by 1911. The population of Weeke parish in 1911 was 4,600, the largest in the city. Of those, 4,492 lived in Weeke Within despite it comprising just 90 of the parish’s 1,094 acres.

This chapter charts the development of the three distinct parts of Weeke Within: Oram’s Arbour, the area around the station and the suburb of Fulflood, where the pre-1914 boom was most apparent.

Oram’s Arbour

Although the urbanisation of Weeke Within did not truly take off until the 1870s some limited development had started to reshape Oram’s Arbour even before the railway was built. Owned by the city, the Arbour was the surviving remnant of an Iron Age enclosure which once probably stretched down to the pre-Roman course of the River Itchen in the valley bottom. In 1837 the New Winchester Union Workhouse was built within the Arbour boundary and by the 1881 Census it housed 10 members of staff and 129 inmates, mostly aged over 50. There were also some mothers with young children as the workhouse had become a place where unmarried mothers were sent to give birth. By the early 1900s attitudes and systems had improved. Old age pensions and national health insurance were introduced and gradually the Winchester workhouse moved towards its 20th Century role as a hospital. It was used as such by the military authorities during the Great War, for soldiers convalescing and undergoing minor operations. Its role as a hospital ended in 1998 and shortly afterwards it was converted into residential accommodation in a development called Oram’s Mount, which has retained much of the original style externally.

From the 1840s, Oram’s Arbour also became the first part of Weeke Within to be developed for housing. The parish boundary crosses Clifton Terrace in an approximate continuation of the line from Newburgh Street and passes through the Arbour just to the south of the Union Workhouse. This means that the northern half of Clifton Road is in Weeke parish, as is North View. Most of the mainly piecemeal developments along the top of Clifton Road were aimed at Army officers at the nearby Winchester Barracks and the increasing number of professional people in Winchester. North View, meanwhile, provided more modest accommodation.

The Station Area

The division of the southern part of the parish by the railway line influenced the way in which the two areas subsequently developed. Building in Fulflood in the second half of the 19th Century would be confined to land to the north-west of the railway, while the area around the station developed from 1840 in a slightly different and more commercial way.

City Road, formerly Northgate Street, was built to make access to the routes to Andover, Stockbridge and Salisbury and the station easier from the city. For centuries before that, travellers had gone down Hyde Street and along Swan Lane, but from the mid 1800s the latter could not cope with the increase in traffic. The route to Weeke and Stockbridge had probably continued in a straight line from Swan Lane up what is now Station Hill and across to join the bottom of the modern St Paul’s Hill. The station was built across this route and as the railway also needed an embankment to cross the Fulflood valley, one was built with a ‘tunnel’ through it to create the new line of the route to Weeke. It was eventually named Lower Stockbridge Road, although occasional references to Weeke or Wyke Road still occurred after its official renaming. The route to Weeke from the Westgate was renamed Upper Stockbridge Road (now St Paul’s Hill), once it passed over the railway bridge.

As well as the changes in road patterns, the development around the station particularly reflected the needs of travellers. Other than trains and the very occasional car, travel for the better off and trade was still horse-drawn and there was still a farrier at 19, Lower Stockbridge Road (38, Stockbridge Road today and currently home to Hayward’s Guitars). The blacksmiths in 1914, Thomas Barnett and his son Charles, were the in-laws of Percy Norgate whose name is on the Great War memorials at St Paul’s and St Matthew’s churches. Nearby, shops, pubs and hotels – including temperance hotels – were built along from the corners of each of the six roads that still meet close to the station. The Carfax Hotel, which opened in 1918 on the corner of Station Hill and Sussex Street, had been converted from Saunders cycle shop. The Eagle Hotel stood on the corner of Swan Lane and Andover Road from 1848. (It was converted into flats in 2001 and is now known as Eagle Court.) The Albion pub, still on the corner of Stockbridge and Andover Roads, was there from the mid-1850s.

Businesses lined the left side of Station Hill all the way up to the station. Nearly all these buildings were demolished from the 1970s to allow eventually for the construction and landscaping of the Hampshire Record Office, which opened in 1993. These included The Carfax Hotel (closed in 1967), Whites’ Removal Offices, the Railway Tavern and Wykeham Motors. The one building to survive – although its business closed in 1992 - was the South Western Inn at the top of Station Hill which had been originally been known as the Licensed Refreshment Rooms when it opened sometime before 1873. Around the corner in Sussex Street, stood the Cowdray Hotel, and two pubs, The Criterion and The Gladstone Arms. The Gladstone had distinctive exterior tiling similar to that surviving at The Fulflood Arms.

Terraced housing in this part of the parish began early. At right angles to the Barnett’s smithy, in the then Lower Stockbridge Road, a terrace of houses was built by the time of the 1870-71 Ordnance Survey (OS) Map (the site is now a car park). Gladstone Street is marked on the same map; the south side survives but the first two houses in that terrace and the adjoining Gladstone Arms were demolished for the widening of Sussex Street in the 1970s. By 1880, Ashley Terrace had been built and lay at right-angles between Gladstone Street and the station, with its front gardens facing the railway. (Until the 1960s there was no Station Road linking Upper High Street to the station, just a pathway.) The northern side of Gladstone Street was demolished for the widening of that street and Sussex Street while Ashley Terrace was knocked down to make way for Station Road.

The terraced housing in Newburgh Street, just inside the southern edge of the parish, was built by 1889 and both sides have survived, although some properties were lost for the widening of Sussex Street. At the west end of Newburgh Street stood Newburgh House. Built before the terraced houses, it was probably the largest property in Weeke Within (according to the 1911 Census it had 27 rooms). From the mid 1880s to the turn of the century, the house, then known as Betchworth, was home to the large family of the Reverend Richards, Rector of St Laurence-in-the-Square. By 1911 it had been renamed Purbeck House and was home to the private Southend School for girls. By 1916 the school had moved to Clifton Road and the property is thought to have then reverted to a private residence. In the late 1920s it was briefly offices for the agricultural section of Hampshire County Council. By 1930 the site was in military hands and has remained so, but the original Newburgh House was demolished in the 1960s, no doubt to make more room for the new Station Road and more modern premises for the military.

Sussex Street developed in a more varied way than the ‘purpose built’ streets of terrace houses described above. Between Gladstone Street and Station Hill were almost entirely commercial premises - pubs, hotels and shops. Between Gladstone and Newburgh Streets stood a row of terrace houses. These were subsequently demolished to make way for a modern terrace built further back to allow for a wider Sussex Street. On the city side of Sussex Street, to the north of Tower Street, stood large semi-detached and detached houses, most of which survive. Between Tower Street and Westgate Lane, the junction of which marked the southern end of the parish, were smaller, terraced houses. (This part of the original Sussex Street, and Westgate Lane, now lie under the Hampshire County Council offices.)

On Andover Road, the southern end of which was in Weeke Within, commercial premises with accommodation above sprang up on both sides. On the east side terraced housing continued as far as Worthy Lane, but this was demolished in the 1960s. Likewise, the two gasholders set back from the road between the shops and the houses on the west side of Andover Road, there by 1889 and a familiar sight on the pre-war parish landscape, have also been knocked down. However, the shops and much of the terraced housing survives on this side. Before 1914 there was no further development on the western side of Andover Road before the railway bridge, at which point Weeke Within becomes Weeke Without.

Fulflood

In the 40 years before the Great War, the area of Fulflood, which had been covered in orchards, market gardens, grazing areas and allotments, gradually became a bustling, mainly lower middle and working class suburb of western Winchester, with a village feel about it. However, it remained in a state of flux, with piecemeal development and road names and numbers being changed as more houses were built.

Fulflood is named after an intermittent spring which rises between the top end of Greenhill Road and Byron Avenue. Whether its original name was Foul-flood or the more salubrious Full-flood is a matter for discussion. It is now culverted as it makes its way downhill (crossing Cheriton Road, Stockbridge Road, Cranworth Road and Andover Road) to join the web of streams in Hyde which flow into the River Itchen. Fulflood Farm, which seems to have been the only farm in Weeke Within by the 19th Century, was comparatively small - the occupant of the farmhouse in the 1861 Census was directly responsible for only 11 acres. The farmhouse, which dated back in parts to the 1600s, ended up being hidden behind the parade of shops along the Stockbridge Road. The building eventually became derelict and was demolished in the 1950s.

Development of Fulflood

By the time of the 1870-71 OS Map, Fulflood had begun to grow. Moderately sized houses had been built in what was then known as Green Lane, and sometimes as Green Hill (now the southern end of Cheriton Road). These houses included The Rosery, now on the corner of Western Road and Avenue Road, and Laurel Cottage (later The Laurels and today Fig Lodge), now in Cheriton Road. By 1889, Green Lane and Green Hill had become Western Road which reflected what had been their route by extending around the corner by The Fulflood Arms as far as West End Terrace. The name Cheriton Road did not appear until about 1909, but Western Road still ‘encroached’ into modern Cheriton Road until 1914.

Avenue Terrace, on the west side of the newly created Avenue Road, had also been built by 1870-71 and was the first terraced housing in the area. It had been built in a more sophisticated style than much of the similar housing that had been erected in the inner city and the Soke. (This was to be true of most of Fulflood’s terraced housing.) Avenue Cottages, on the steps between Avenue Road and North View, had also been built. These houses now form part of Avenue Road.

Elm Road began to be developed in the 1870s. It was initially named Elmville and was planned for the upper end of the market, as Oram’s Arbour had been. Why else was it made wider than the average side road in the neighbourhood? The two substantial pairs of semi-detached houses, Nos 1-2 and 3-4, on the left just off the Stockbridge Road, which were the first to be built in the road in the 1870s, give an indication of what the Elmville Estate Company had planned for the whole road. However, it seems that Elmville was too close to the railway station, especially in the days of steam trains. With a goods and shunting yard just across the main road (now one of the station car parks) and cows, pigs and sheep passing by on the untarmaced main road to be sold in the Winchester market or to be carried by trains to other markets, it must have been a very dirty and smelly environment to live close to. (The regular use of dustcarts in the summer to spray the roads with water was a common site in pre-Great War Fulflood.) Consequently, development in Elm Road became more modest in scale as it did in other parts of Fulflood. A few large houses with mews had been built on St Paul’s Hill between Clifton Road and Elm Road and were therefore even closer to the station with all its disadvantages. These have long since been demolished.

By 1878, a pair of semi-detached houses, Highgrove Villas (by 1891 Glenwood Villas, now 2 and 4, Cheriton Road), had been built between Avenue Road and North View. Around the same time two pairs of semi-detached houses, Greenhill Villas, were built, just below Avenue Road. All these were probably the last moderately sized houses to be built in this part of Fulflood. There then followed a period of mainly terraced, but also some semi-detached, development on both sides of Western Road. These properties, which still stand linked up with The Rosery and The Laurels (now Fig Lodge) which had previously been isolated. Terraced housing was also built from The Fulflood Arms up to Greenhill Villas. These are also now part of Cheriton Road.

From the late 1880s sets of terraced houses were built below Winchester Prison. One of these, Hillgrove Terrace, was on what was then Western Road (now Nos 1-19 Cheriton Road) and the others in the new Greenhill Road. Greenhill Avenue was built at right angles to Greenhill Road and led to what was then the back entrance of the prison. Greenhill Terrace, much further up, was also built earlier, also at right angles to Greenhill Road. These were probably cottages for workers at the then adjacent Hilliers Nurseries. Probably the last development to the west of the Stockbridge Road in Fulflood before the Great War was built by the Winchester Working Mens’ Houses Society, formed by 1912. Its cottage-style houses built in the triangle between Greenhill Road, Milverton Road and Cheriton Road, were a forerunner of the post-war change in architectural fashions.

As late as 1889, the Fulflood stretch of the Stockbridge Road, between the bridge under the railway and The Roebuck pub, remained largely undeveloped. Other than The Roebuck itself and The Old Red Deer (a pub which stood on the corner of Stockbridge Road and Elm Road), the only other development was a small number of houses across the road from Elm Road. These included a moderately large detached property known as Bradford House (modern No. 106). The occupant in the 1911 Census was Charles Henry Ellis, the manager of the Maypole Dairy in Winchester High Street. During the Great War soldiers from the Hampshire Carabiniers Yeomanry broke the shop’s windows as it was thought that Mr Ellis, who sported a Kaiser-like bristly moustache, was a German!

By 1894, terraced housing was being built on the west side of the railway bridge on what was then called Lower Stockbridge Road. The houses between The Old Red Deer and Western Road, which are now all commercial properties, had also been built. Gradually, housing began to creep up Stockbridge Road, especially on the north-east side, and by 1909 development extended up to just beyond Hatherley Road. The houses beyond Fairfield Road were mainly moderately large semi-detached properties. Slightly later, in the 1890s and early 1900s, Fairfield Road, Cranworth Road, Brassey Road, Boscobel Road and Owens Road were developed, again mainly with terraced housing. Houses on Hatherley Road, however, were built to the standard of those on Stockbridge Road above Fairfield Road, but its north side was not completed until after the Great War. With so much development going on during the 30 years or so prior to the war, the new suburb of Fulflood must have resembled a permanent building site.

Religious Activity

All this building took place within the ancient parish of Weeke and as early as the 1860s it was apparent that the small medieval church of St Matthew’s could no longer cope with the increasing population. Besides, the new Fulflood looked more towards Winchester than the still rural village of Weeke. Work on St Paul’s Church began in 1870 on what was then Union Hill, later Upper Stockbridge Road and now St Paul’s Hill. The architect, John Colson, chose a Victorian Gothic design but, with money apparently in short supply, building work took almost 40 years. The chancel was consecrated in 1872 and work finally completed in 1910. The north wall was decorated with graffito work by George Heywood Sumner, one of the leading Art Nouveau artists of his time and son of Mary Sumner, founder of the Mothers’ Union. Fashions change, however, and Sumner’s work was painted over with limewash in 1963, although a small patch has since been uncovered, and the cartoons for the original work are now in the Hampshire Record Office.

As the suburb developed, a Mission Hall in Brassey Road, now a private residence numbered 41A, was built for the parish and by 1914 held a weekly service every Thursday. There was another Mission Hall to the west of the railway arch on Stockbridge Road by 1923 but it has not yet been researched. It was demolished recently for housing.

According to the 1914 Warren’s Directory, Weeke Within had several church social groups, including a number that catered for children. The main parish Sunday school for older boys was held at 3pm and its superintendent was a Mr Fifield. This could be the father of Basil ‘Jack’ Fifield who is listed on the parish war memorials. The girls and infants had their Sunday School at 3pm at Western School in Elm Road. The Brassey Road Mission Hall’s Sunday school was at 10am for boys, girls and infants. On a more obviously sociable level, the Boys Club met on Monday evenings and the Girls Club on Thursday evenings in St Paul’s Church Rooms which had been built alongside the church in 1912. There was also a parish social club for the men, presumably to provide an alternative to the pubs, which ran from 6-11pm Monday to Friday and on Saturday from 2pm. Billiards and whist were two of its activities.

The parish had another hall, built by 1909, at the bottom of what is now St Paul’s Hill. During the Great War when Winchester was surrounded by military camps, it would have been conveniently placed to provide refreshments to soldiers arriving or departing from the station as well as a recreational space for reading newspapers and writing letters. A further communal building, Western Hall, was adjacent to the later Vokes & Becks Monumental Masons’ site (now Becks Mews). The premises, probably run by the Evangelical Free Church, were there by 1895 and were used as a public hall and a Sunday School.

Schools

Every ‘village’ had to have a school. In 1878, Western Church of England School was built at the upper end of Elm Road. It had a dual purpose, as a mixed infants catering for ages 5-7 and as a girls’ elementary school, educating pupils from 7-13. As a primary school, it moved to its present site in Browning Drive, at the top end of Fulflood, in 1975. The old Western School building survives and from 1997 it was converted into apartments and renamed Bankside House.

For many of the men of the parish who died in the Great War, Western School would have been their first. However, Weeke had no boys’ elementary school. The bright ones went to St Thomas Elementary School in Mews Lane (off Romsey Road) or other elementary schools in the city. Those even brighter, and who could get their fees paid for by an award, moved from St Thomas’s at the age of 13 to the Peter Symonds Grammar School which opened in its new building in 1899. Four of the six names on the Peter Symonds Great War Memorial Board and which also appear on the parish memorials lived in Fulflood and had their fees paid.

Those girls bright and fortunate enough could get grants to go to the fee-paying Winchester County Girls School, now The Westgate School. Founded in 1909, it moved to the then new building in Cheriton Road in 1911. The school aimed to educate girls up to the age of 16-17 to prepare them to run a home or to become teachers. In January 1915, as the Great War entered its sixth month, the Army requisitioned the school building, along with many others in Winchester, as troop accommodation. The winter of 1914-15 was appallingly wet and cold and the military authorities feared for the wellbeing of the thousands of troops mobilising in camps on the downs around the city, many just in bell tents. The school moved to a pair of semi-detached houses, later the site of Nethercliffe School, in Hatherley Road. Here the girls grew vegetables throughout the war. After they were able to return, probably later in 1915, the school used the huts built by the Army as much needed extra classrooms.

Weeke Within briefly had a private girl’s school when the aforementioned Southend School moved to Newburgh House by 1911. The school had been started by a Miss Lunn as a kindergarten in St Thomas Street, expanded to Southgate Street as a day and boarding school before relocating to Newburgh House. By 1916, however, it had moved again, to 3-4 Clifton Road, and was outside the parish. Doris Burniston, born in 1899, attended Southend School when it was at Newburgh House and she described it as a school for trades people’s daughters: her father was a solicitor’s clerk.

Retail

The new ‘village’ of Fulflood had houses, a church and a school. Another essential component, shops, often just sprang up. It was easy to turn a front room into a general store - for example, 52, Western Road (the address then and now) was Brading’s off-licence. Some roads seem to have been developed with a shop at the corner as part of the design. Examples of these were on the western corner of Stockbridge Road and Cranworth Road which has only recently been converted into purely residential use, and Smith’s at 7, later 13, Brassey Road on the western corner with Boscobel Road. There were two sub-post offices in Fulflood in 1914. The Warren’s Directory of that year does not specify where, but Smith’s may have been one of them as it was a post office by 1921.

With no domestic refrigeration, fresh milk had to be purchased from one of Fulflood’s several dairies. According to the 1914 Warren’s Directory, Mrs J. Lay’s Dairy stood at the corner of Western Road and Stockbridge Road (currently Solutions Dental Clinic). The 1908 Directory shows a dairy at 22, Western Road (part of The Rosery site) run by a Mrs Montague, but it was no longer listed as such by 1914. The 1881 Census showed that Fulflood Farm had also become a dairy, with its address given as 20, Week (sic) Road. Again, however, it was not listed as a dairy in 1914.

By 1914, the biggest concentration of commercial premises in Fulflood had been established on the Stockbridge Road between Elm Road and Western Road, with the proprietors usually living above the shops. Two have been mentioned already - The Old Red Deer at one corner and Lays’ Dairy at the other. In between were several general stores, a butcher and a fishmonger. There was also a newsagent run by the Tong family whose son, Herbert, is listed on the parish memorials. This property, now No. 11, is the derelict site alongside the still surviving archway to what had been J. H. White’s coal stores.

On the opposite side of Western Road from Lays’ Dairy was The Omega off licence. Already there in the late 1800s, the property remained an off licence until the early 21st Century. There was a further off licence across the Stockbridge Road (now Pi restaurant) which only closed in the 1990s.

Two shops stood in Western Road by 1914, the aforementioned Bradings at No. 52, and H. Sealey at No. 24 (the address then and now), on the corner with Avenue Road opposite The Rosery. Sealey was listed as a grocer, baker and pastry cook and his shop known as Western Supply Stores. It later became a Co-op. Avenue Road had a grocer, George Winkworth, at No. 22, up the steps at the other end. Doris Burniston, mentioned earlier, recalled sweets being sold from the shop through the railings to Western School children, a tradition carried on well into the 20th Century.

Employment

Amidst all the housing, workshops sprang up to provide further employment. This was a typical arrangement throughout areas of terraced housing in Winchester. Vokes and Beck, the monumental masons, took over from John Marsh in 1901 at what is now 108, Stockbridge Road, by the modern roundabout with St Paul’s Hill. The firm left Fulflood in 2005 and was the last prominent workshop style business to leave the area. Today the only clue to the firm’s long association with Fulflood is in the name of Becks Mews, the recent housing development on the former Vokes and Beck site. Basil Vokes, son of one of the founders of the business, is listed on the parish memorials.

J.H. Whites Coal Stores was situated at the then 87, Stockbridge Road, through the still surviving archway in the row of shops, between the modern Nos 9 and 11. Whites was one of the coal businesses responsible for organising rationing in Winchester during the Great War when there was a shortage of domestic coal due to priority being given to the needs of the armed services and industry. In 1914 Southern Counties Agricultural Trading Society (SCATS) had their registered office and stores on Cranworth Road near the railway bridge, next to the Mission Hall. The SCATS store is still in Winchester, in Winnall, and is known today as Moles Country Store.

Public Houses

What of non-church related leisure facilities? By 1914, men (mainly) had several pubs to choose from as well as the parish social club. The Roebuck, probably one of the earliest and a pub that still survives, was built on Stockbridge Road and opened as The Three Horse Shoes in the 1830s. The 1841 Census showed that it had become The New Bridge Inn and by 1851 it had been renamed The Roebuck, with the publican being also described in that year’s Census as a farmer. When first built, The Roebuck stood in the middle of agricultural land which increasingly became used for horticulture and later for housing.

As well as being the point at which Weeke Within became Weeke Without, The Roebuck also marked the city and Parliamentary boundary for many years and a small boundary marker is still embedded in the front wall. The pub also owned some of the land on the opposite side of the Stockbridge Road (now Langton Close), which from at least 1869 to about 1902 was the site of an annual sheep and lamb fair. The 1870-71 OS Map marks a cricket pitch on the site and from 1902 until 1914 it was also home to Winchester Football Club, with the pub being used as the changing rooms. In 1917, when wartime food shortages were becoming a problem, The Roebuck’s football pitch was divided up into allotments. After the war, the club relocated to Bar End. A number of Winchester FC players were killed or wounded in the Great War, including Edwin ‘Teddy’ Smith who lived in Fairfield Road, close to the club ground. He is listed on the parish memorials.

Mark Wakeford, the publican of The Roebuck in the 1881 Census, also built The Old Red Deer, as a family hotel and pub at the corner of Elm Road and Stockbridge Road. It had opened in 1881 and was extended in 1889 to include stabling. (That building still survives.) By 1899, the pub was being run by Thomas Shefferd whose son Cecil also worked there and who is listed on the parish memorials. Just down the road, Cecil’s uncle, William Shefferd, was the publican at The Albion. In a large yard behind The Old Red Deer (now Red Deer Court) a barn provided space for carriages and wagons. Being so close to the station, it must have been well placed for guests and a delivery business to the surrounding villages. Behind The Roebuck was a field (now Pilgrim’s Gate) that was used for grazing the Old Red Deer horses and for holding circuses. There was also at some stage a Red Deer cricket team. Despite its good location, The Old Red Deer had become solely a pub in 1916. It closed in 1983 but the building survives with Winchester Travel Health on the corner and Fulflood Gallery & Framing next door.

The Railway on St Paul’s Hill opened in 1883, presumably also to serve the needs of travellers as well as locals. The now famous music venue at the back may have been used as a livestock store for animals being transported by train. The Railway and The Old Red Deer should have done well in the war. The huge influx of soldiers meant Winchester’s population more than doubled between 1914-18 with no fewer than one million soldiers estimated to have passed through the city during the period. Most arrived and departed by train and it is inconceivable that they did not visit pubs like The Railway and Old Red Deer, just a stone’s throw from the station.

The Fulflood Arms, still on the corner of Western Road and Cheriton Road, was opened in 1871 and still has the original green glazed tiles on the outside that marked it out as a Winchester Brewery Company pub. The Volunteer, on the corner of North View and Middle Road, was there before 1880 and was formerly The Woolpack. It closed in the 1970s and is now a private residential house.

Occupations

By the outbreak of the Great War, Weeke Within on both sides of the railway was a thriving and virtually self-sufficient part of Winchester. The many occupations listed in the censuses showed that much of the male population was skilled, with men working as joiners, carpenters, decorators, plasterers, builders, boot and shoe makers, plumbers, bricklayers, printers, glaziers, tailors, bakers, domestic gardeners and coopers. Others worked in what today we would describe as service industries – as shopkeepers, clerks, hotel waiters and cooks. Still more worked in the slowly expanding public sector as prison wardens, postmen, policemen and, of course, as soldiers and sailors. There were also men still working in jobs related to horse-drawn transport, such as farriers, harness makers, grooms, carters and carmen. However, while some described themselves as railway porters and jobbing gardeners, there were very few listed as just labourers. In the larger middle class properties on the Stockbridge Road and on Fairfield Road and Hatherley Road lived businessmen and men and women teachers (including singing and music teachers). Winchester’s Chief Post Office Clerk and a Times correspondent also lived here.

Dressmaking and domestic service were the most common occupations for single women, but they could also be milliners or work in or even run – as in the case of Mrs Lay – a dairy or a shop. Some had jobs as clerks. Very few married women were listed as having an occupation: most still faced the onerous daily task of running homes without the labour-saving domestic appliances we take for granted. In the larger houses in Weeke Within there was often one living-in servant. Most families in Weeke Within had enough money to afford to rent their new houses from their the husband’s and maybe their offsprings’ wages. Some took in the occasional boarder to supplement the finances. Several widows were recorded running boarding houses as an occupation, and a few worked as laundresses.

Impact of the Great War

The impact of the Great War on Fulflood and Weeke, like the rest of Winchester, was immediate and profound. The arrival of thousands of troops at the nearby barracks in early August 1914 galvanised the local population in a way that areas more ‘remote’ from the war never were. People responded by supporting the war effort in myriad ways – billeting troops, giving to, or working for one of the many war charities, enrolling as nurses, working as ambulance drivers or helping out at the ‘clubs’ – at Weeke Parish Hall, for example – that provided soldiers with refreshments and entertainment. Some families may have housed Belgian refugees. All this represented a voluntary, rather than a state-led, response. Moreover, although patriotism and enthusiasm did initially play a part in driving this response, most people were motivated more by a sense of duty and a strong belief in the righteousness of Britain’s cause. The same factors drove military recruitment and explain why more of the Weeke parish men who fought in the Great War were volunteers rather than conscripts.

The war affected people in other ways, too. The coal shortages mentioned earlier not only caused hardship during the winter months but led to travel restrictions, particularly on the trains. At a more basic level, the sights and sounds of everyday life changed: contemporary accounts describe how Winchester became a ‘sea of khaki’, its roads choked with military vehicles and the paraphernalia of war. The building of the Army mobilisation camps around the city altered the physical landscape even more dramatically, to the regret of some. Unfamiliar accents – Scots, Welsh, Canadian and, later American – became commonplace on the streets and in shops and pubs. Black American servicemen, who arrived with the US Army in 1917-18, would undoubtedly have been the subject of lively conversation among curious locals.

However, the biggest challenge families faced was the strain of living with the knowledge that their menfolk might be killed in battle. From early in the war, it became apparent that losses would be on a previously unimaginable scale, and mourning, not just for immediate family but for friends and neighbours, became the norm. For many, the trauma cast a shadow for years to come. Some never fully came to terms with their loss.

The end of the war in November 1918 and the return of servicemen over the following months would be bittersweet in Weeke parish, as elsewhere. The parish memorials list 91 men who died but our research has shown the true figure to be over 100 and many more returned home disabled physically and/or mentally scarred. The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19 then heaped further misery on an exhausted population. The communal effort in the publication of the Winchester War Service Register in 1921 and the creation of the memorial boards for the men of Fulflood and Weeke at St Paul’s Church in 1922 would have hopefully provided some solace.

GERALDINE BUCHANAN