History of Andover Drill Hall that burned to ground in 1983

The hall was built in 1908 to provide a base for the Volunteers of ‘E’ Company, 4th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment and an official ceremony was attended by General Sir Ian Hamilton (who laid the foundation stone) and the mayor, Thomas Webb, as well as other dignitaries and members of the council.

A guard of honour was provided by the Volunteers for whom it was being built, under the command of Captain L Frazer.

The site was an empty plot, next to what was then the National Schools, and opposite the fire station, then located in East Street.

The exterior was largely of corrugated iron, lined inside with matchboard.

Heating was by means of stoves, with ventilation from the roof. There was an armoury, a committee room and an officers’ room and also accommodation for a caretaker’s premises that comprised a living room, four bedrooms and a store room.

Presumably, this was in the adjoining tower. The contract for the building went to Frank Beale and Sons, whose yard was little more than 100 yards away in Adelaide Road.

However, by the time of its official opening in October 1908, the old Volunteers had been replaced by the new Territorial Army.

The Drill Hall became the official headquarters of ‘D’ Company, though still under the command of Captain Frazer, who had designed the new building.

Just six years later, World War I broke out and many of the territorials went off to war. It has been recalled by the late Sydney Butler who lived in Junction Road that many of them worked for Tasker’s Ironworks at Anna Valley and there were many empty places at the work benches during that time.

Although the Drill Hall was built for a military purpose, from the outset it was hired for social occasions.

Various advertisements show the range of events held there: just a few weeks after it opened, there was the annual ball of the Tedworth Hunt.

At £1 a ticket, this was evidently a somewhat exclusive event. In the 1920s there were band festivals; one of these in 1923 was given by the Salisbury Salvation Army Band in aid of the Andover version.

Also, there were political gatherings: in 1931, there was a meeting in support of the Labour candidate, C A Goatcher, and the Andover Conservative Association held a social event that was addressed by Lord Lymington.

Not forgetting its roots, there were annual dinners for ‘D’ Company as well.

The Andover Amateur Operatic Society flourished during the 1930s, as did many other concert parties and organised entertainments.

Many of these were to raise funds, principally for the War Memorial Hospital which, in common with other local hospitals, was financed by local efforts.

The Drill Hall was ideal for the staging of these and productions such as the comic opera ‘Patience’ and ‘The Geisha’ were annual extravaganzas by the operatic society in those days.

Another serious but social event was the annual Andover Music Festival.

This started in 1928 and took place over two days, with choir competitions in the mornings and a full concert in the evenings.

The eleventh of these events in 1938 featured soloists Stuart Robertson, Stanley Wheatley, May Bartlett, Mrs Taylor-Young and local-boy-made-good, Hubert Dawkes.

Indeed, many of the stars of the pre-war music world took part in these occasions at one time or another.

The cost to hire the Drill Hall for the two days in the mid-1930s was £7 7s and all these events were held by permission of the 4th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment, whose hall it still was.

After the end of World War II, the Drill Hall or T.A. Centre as it became usually known, was the principal dance hall of Saturday night entertainment.

This was the era of the small dance band with performers such as Bill Proctor and his Orchestra, the Melody Makers and Bert Osborne.

Ten years later, rock and roll superseded some of this, though the band ensembles continued to perform there.

By the 1960s, a flowering of local pop bands such as Pete Mystery and the Strangers, Ten Feet Five, The Senators and of course The Troggs, were elbowing their way onto the scene.

By then the old T.A. Centre had stiff competition from the Fiesta Hall, which opened next to East Street’s Central Club in 1954, and became the ‘new place to be’. A book on this period by Pete Staples and John Walker, entitled ‘Andover – A Musical History’ is being launched next week.

At some point the T.A. Centre was sold off and it was revitalised around 1970 by becoming the Country Bumpkin night club and, mainly as a discotheque, it attracted Andover’s youth of that era, though the hall was available to hire for other events.

It all came to an end one night in 1983 when it burned to the ground. The site remains empty to this day, though the original foundation stone from 1908 was later retrieved from the ruins and returned to the successors of ‘D’ company’s regiment.