When I first saw this photographic postcard of c.1910, I was unsure whether it was Andover.

Although Banks is a local name and there was indeed a tobacconist called Banks, he was William James Banks and his shop was at 38 High Street, a little way beyond the entrance to Union Street.

Luckily, the number 3 is prominent, so it was easy to check shop buildings for High Street, Bridge Street, London Street and Winchester Street for similarities.

Sure enough, though everything has changed on the ground floor, the brickwork and the first-floor windows clearly match No 3 Bridge Street today.

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To the left, the building curves around the corner into Winchester Street.

That part is No 1 Bridge Street and houses Ransom Houghton, the solicitors, who also occupy the upper floor of No 3.

The shop below is now the gift shop, Mooch. The entire building was listed in 1982. Surely this shop was connected to the High Street Banks but who was E Banks?

William J Banks of 38 High Street was born in 1857, the son of James and Charlotte Banks.

James was born in Andover in 1822 and Charlotte was the former Charlotte Holdway, born in Hurstbourne Tarrant in 1825.

They married in Andover in 1852. Before marriage, Charlotte had been a servant to William Hawkins Heath, a retired banker whose house in London Street still exists and was for many years the estate agent Ellen’s and is now Myddelton and Major.

The couple had three children, one of whom was Rosa who married Walter Layton.

She ran the china and glass warehouse at 49 High Street behind the Guildhall from the 1890s until the mid 1930s, carried on by her son Leslie until 1952.

William James opened his tobacconist’s shop at 38 High Street in the early 1880s and directories from 1885 onwards list him as such, though strangely the census returns for 1881 and 1891 describe him as a brewer’s clerk.

His then widowed mother, Charlotte, lived with him and Charlotte must have run the business, though it was listed under her son’s name.

Charlotte died in March 1892 at her daughter Rosa Layton’s address (just across the street).

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Only two months before, William had married florist Eliza Barnham in Fulham, the daughter of a market gardener there.

William and Eliza came back to Andover and lived at 38 High Street and it can only be presumed that after her mother-in-law Charlotte’s death, Eliza ran the tobacconist’s shop.

Even in 1901, William was still at the brewery, by then described as a brewer’s manager. Which brewery it was, is not stated but the nearest was Poore’s, whose office was right next to his sister Rosa’s shop. Living with William and Eliza in 1901 was Emily Curtis, a ‘tobacconist’s assistant’.

William and Eliza had no children but adopted a daughter Ivy.

She was aged four in 1901 and still with them ten years later but disappears after that.

She may have moved away or married elsewhere.

Local directories can only provide a ‘snapshot’ of the moment the information within them is gathered.

Until 1934, when the first Kelly’s Directory of Andover appeared, it is only county directories that give the listings of businesses and some private residents.

Kelly’s county directories were generally printed every four years or so, and the 1911 edition first lists William James Banks as a tobacconist at both 38 High Street and 3 Bridge Street.

Because of any possible directory time-lag, this second shop could have been opened at any time after 1907 but the ‘E Banks’ on the signboard above the shop is clearly his wife Eliza and not William himself.

According to the census of 1911, he had now taken on the role of tobacconist himself at 38 High Street, and the decision to open a second shop would have been made whenever Robert Woodgate, the earlier tobacconist at No 3, moved out.

Tobacconists have frequently sold much else besides tobacco and its related products; No 3’s window here contains, golf clubs, cricket bats, tennis rackets, while a sign to the left of the door reads ‘Banks’s Cricket, Tennis, Football and Other Athletic Goods’.

Perhaps the same could be obtained from the first shop as well.

Is this William James Banks outside? More than likely – he has the air of owning the space and looks like a man in his mid-fifties.

The second shop was a relatively short-lived venture as after 1918, the couple retired to Twickenham, in Middlesex, the area from which Eliza had come.

William died in 1926 and his wife in 1929.

As commonly happened, both the Banks shops were taken by another tobacconist - Walter Rugg.

He opened a third, more prestigious shop at 14 High Street a few years later and eventually closed the other two.

In the 1930s, the shop in Bridge Street became first a greengrocery, and then Waller’s the grocer, who remained there into the 1960s.