This is a view of Union Street taken by Charles Wardell in 1967. In the far distance is East Street, with the top of the street then being used as a car park. The building with the chapel- style windows was the Union Street Hall used by the Brethren, while adjacent to it is a large building known as Wyndgate House. From 1846 to 1860 it was Andover’s first police station.

Andover first established a borough force in 1836. Before that, the town was reliant on two constables who were elected annually by the corporation. In the decade after 1836, the borough force may have been a little different in practice from before but it then came under the regulatory supervision of the watch committee, a council body created under the terms of the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act to oversee local policing.

Borough forces in many cases proved inadequate and soon many of those in Hampshire amalgamated with the newly-established Hampshire Constabulary, as did Andover in 1846. This meant a regular full-time force stationed at Andover who needed a base.

READ MORE: David Borrett history feature: How Bridge Street has changed over the years

The building chosen was owned by Robert Tasker in Union Street. It was a large house and garden, capable of accommodating the entire Andover force of sergeant and four constables. In 1851 these comprised the senior officer, 34-year-old James Marks and his wife; PC George Cooke and his wife; and three unmarried constables – William Miles, William Alexander and John Pudney.

Maria Titheridge, writing in 1915 of the 1840s and ’50s records that Dr Hammond lived there before the police took it over. As a police station, she went there in 1859 because her brother John had been wrongly arrested for supposedly breaking into Hatherden House. He was employed by builder William Gue to look after the men working there and arriving late in the evening, he found nobody at home, they all having gone to an entertainment at Charlton. He fetched a ladder to get in via an upstairs window and within minutes a policeman arrived and took him back to the station.

There were no facilities for detaining prisoners at Union Street but opposite the Phoenix brewery in Chantry Street there were rudimentary lock-ups, useful for ‘cooling off’ purposes. There had also long been a borough gaol in Winchester Street. This was not police property but was owned by the corporation and run by gaolkeeper Thomas Cowley. That gaol became the police station after 1860.

Wyndgate House is noted for its resident ghostly cavalier with ‘accursed sword’, a story related by Bert Earney in his book ‘Andover’s Ghosts’. But here we are going back to whatever stood there in the 17th century, not to this 19th century building, though apparently the ghost survived into the 1950s.

In 1871, it was the premises of Henry Loscombe, a solicitor, while during the 1880s and ‘90s John Chuter, a teacher of music and organist lived there; a borough councillor, he was mayor in 1892. The name Wyndgate House was probably given to it by another resident solicitor, Pemberton Talbot, who lived there during the early 20th century, while by the 1930s, builder Frank Sainsbury used it as both a house and business premises. Finally, throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, as Dalton House, it became the British Legion club. Major Dalton was the name of the club’s branch president. Sadly, however, like almost everything in old Union Street, this interesting house has now gone.

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