There must be many readers who can recall Baldock’s the tobacconist at 71 High Street.

On the opposite side of the street from Marks and Spencer’s, it briefly escaped demolition when the Chantry Centre was built in 1969 but was among a short line of shops that were replaced by modern buildings in the mid-1970s. Up to the last it remained an old-fashioned tobacconist and confectioners, with a diverse assortment of other goods as well. Here, for instance, there are bunches of walking sticks hanging up beside the shop door, although the main window is predominantly tobacco products.

Inside was the layout of a typical small shop – an extensive L-shaped counter top and the walls lined with shelves, filled with stock, including some old stone tobacco jars that must have been there since the shop opened. Browsing was not an option; the shopkeeper was there to serve.

The original proprietor, whose name was above the door, was Thomas Richard Baldock who was born in London in 1868 and was in the Royal Scots Greys before coming to Andover to open his shop around 1909. By then he was an army pensioner with three children, none of the family having been born in Hampshire. He briefly ran the shop next door at No 69 which had previously been a tobacconist run by Mrs Amelia Harrison but then moved to the premises shown here, where the business remained until its demise.

The photograph dates from about 1920 but the three assistants posing for the camera are not named. Possibly the senior lady to the left is Mrs Edith Baldock. The couple had two sons and one daughter Florence who may be the central figure. Unfortunately, Mrs Baldock died prematurely in 1925 and Thomas Baldock was only in his sixties when he also died at Christmas in 1939. The post-war business was not family-owned and for many years it was run by a Mr Crane.

Nos 69 and 71 were once one building and belonged to Winchester College. In the early 19th century it was leased by the College to Heath’s brewery as the White Bear inn and at some point, the building was split into two sets of premises, the inn apparently reduced to its northern end only which later became Baldock’s. Until the 1960s, the two shops were separated by a narrow alleyway that led down into White Bear Yard, a name that long survived the inn itself, which had closed in the 1860s.

There is an old published story that the inn’s final innkeeper was one Susannah Smith, a dwarf who used to dress up in her finery outside the premises to attract customers. Mrs Smith was indeed landlady of the inn during the 1840s and 1850s and died aged 70 in 1860. It was then run briefly by her son Sylvester William Smith. If any of the dressing-up story is true it is likely to have referred to Mrs Smith’s unfortunate daughter Rebecca Susan, listed in the 1851 census as a ‘cripple’, an all-encompassing term that may have meant dwarf in this instance. She sadly died aged 30 in 1854.