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ABBEY CLOSE in the 18th century |
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A big fire in Church Street
This sketch was made up from old photographs and shows how Abbey Close looked towards the end of the nineteenth-century. It had been a momentous hundred years: in 1826 a huge fire had burnt down three of the four houses in Church Street leaving only the malt house (at the top of the picture) unscathed. The three houses (numbers 22-30) were rebuilt within two or three years to look much as they do today.
The house adjacent to the malt house had been rebuilt as two, now numbers 28 and 30. Number 30 was rented from the owner, Lord Lansdowne, to house the maltster or his staff and in 1829 number 30 became a pub called the Lansdowne Arms. By 1896, both houses were rented out to Romsey's famous brewer Strong and Co (originators of the sign ‘You are in Strong Country Now’ alongside the railway track from Waterloo).
The large house next door (number 26) was rebuilt and began a long career as the residence of a succession of shopkeepers. In the early 20th century the house became the Romsey Co-op. Shopkeepers living at number 26 invariably used the shed shown in the foreground of the picture as a store. The shed was rented from the Church and for reasons which will become clear it is always referred to as ‘the old belfry ground’ in Church records.Farming out the poor
The cottages adjacent to the shed were converted from two to four in 1839 in order to ‘farm out the poor’ and, in the process, the timber-framed buildings acquired a brick skin. They were now pitifully small, only 10 ft wide and about 15 ft deep but they did have a primitive form of sanitation. They had been owned by Winchester College since the 1500s and survived until 1974 when they were pulled down to make way for Abbey Close.
A beer drinkers paradise
The malt house had been built around 1770 but in 1854 it was bought by William Lawes who extended it to about twice its original capacity (from 12 to 20 quarters). Then he built a brewery adjoining the malthouse facing onto Church Road. It only operated for a few years when it was bought by a rival brewer, Jesser and Cressey, and closed down. However, for some time Abbey Close had a complete circuit; barley was delivered to the malthouse at the Church Street entrance which supplied malt to the brewery in Church Road which supplied Lansdowne Arms pub and happy people emerged. The malthouse was bought by Strong and Co in 1897 when it suffered the indignity of being used as a bottling shed.
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