I want to return to the 1864 photograph of the London & County Bank, taken just before the bank’s premises were re-built, in order to highlight the shops on the corner of the High Street, shown here in close-up.

Both of these were later to become Burden’s, with the lower one stretching around into Bridge Street becoming a tobacconist’s, and the other a fishmonger.

When numbering was first instituted for the 1881 census, the former became No 2 Bridge Street and the latter No 1 High Street.

The entire building looks to be in poor state and would not be owned by the shopkeepers who occupied them.

Joseph Wakeford, who was once the miller at Cricklade and was elected mayor in 1841, owned the building but whether there was any disquiet about the state of rented premises in those days is difficult to say.

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They were very different times and there were no utilities laid on.

Even piped water was something for the future and although gas was used for lighting in certain places – indeed the gas lamp on the corner had only recently been installed – there would be no such thing in the poorly maintained, rented premises of Andover during the 1860s.

The corner shop was occupied by confectioner 42-year-old Hannah Wager in 1851.

She married Reuben Cross on Christmas Day that year and he became the shop’s named occupier. 

Perhaps confectionery was still sold there but it would largely become a base for Cross, who had been a skilled stone mason but had lost an eye when a chipping of stone flew into it.

After the accident, he became the high bailiff of the county court, as well as the registrar of marriages, a piano tuner and a teacher of music.

Hannah died in 1866 and he later married Ann Nutley, moving into the Phoenix brewery in Chantry Street, where he added the trade of brewer to his accomplishments.

The other shop in 1864 was that of Charles Tredgold, a bootmaker.

Born in 1837 and baptised at Knights Enham, his father, also Charles, was landlord of the Royal Oak, Charlton.

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Charles junior was apprenticed to Robert Beare, bootmaker of Bridge Street by 1851 and, coincidentally, in the same household was 29-year-old Reuben Cross, then a ‘writing clerk’.

The boot and shoe business was a family trade; Charles’ uncle, William Tredgold, had a shop in the upper High Street but evidently did not take on his nephew as an apprentice.

Perhaps it was just as well as he died in 1853 before any apprenticeship would have been completed.

The young Charles, once qualified, entered into partnership with Robert H Hayward, whose father ran the Angel inn but this was short-lived.

White’s directory of 1859 mentions Tredgold and Hayward as bootmakers but the former was evidently working on his own by the time this photograph was taken.

Charles married Sarah Cornish on 7 April 1861 but sadly, Sarah died the following year, probably in giving birth to their first child, Charles Cornish Tredgold, who also died a few months later.

A notice in the Andover Advertiser of 18 December 1863 states that ‘C Tredgold has moved to premises next to the Angel inn’, so with the evidence of the bank’s arrival in May 1862 (discussed last week), we can date the photograph accurately to 1862-63.

Charles married Sarah Sophia Penfold, on 10 March 1864 and the couple were to have five children.

In 1870, he gave up boot-making and became Andover’s postmaster at 34 High St, a position he retained until his death in 1898.