David Borrett's column: The business name Star and Garter

Today, the same inn at the bottom of the High Street is still called the Star and Garter, albeit with an eccentric break some 40 years ago when it was re-named The Danebury. Happily, in recent years the old inn name has been restored and it is the Star and Garter once more.

But Andover has seen the name Star and Garter used for three different buildings, the reason being that the Marcer family, occupier of the first one, moved from one to the other, taking the name with them as they moved. The earliest Star and Garter was in London Street on the site of the building usually known as Savoy Chambers, a name given to it after the building of the Savoy cinema in 1938. Today it houses a night club but the original building, although Grade II listed, was pulled down and replaced by a replica in 1978, and so what we see today is a complete re-build.

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Savoy Chambers in London Street. The first Star and Garter. (Image: Charles Wardell) We do not know exactly how old that building was. Cyril Berry thought it was of the William and Mary period (1689-1702) when he wrote his book Old Andover in 1976 but the first edition of Pevsner’s The Buildings of England described it thus: ‘Two storeys and attic. Stuccoed walls. Hipped slate and tiled roofs with three dormers. Fine Tuscan porch with a Venetian window over. Built 1750 with 1800 renovations.’

In 1767, landlord Richard Marcer evidently pleased all concerned when he catered for a dinner and ball given by local MP Sir John Griffin Griffin, Bart. The table was reportedly ‘decorated with such elegance and taste that it equalled anything of its kind in London.’

Four years later, that same landlord composed a rather disgruntled notice that appeared in local newspapers in November 1771 to say that he had lately purchased the Bell inn, as the Star and Garter where he then resided had ‘been very abruptly and unexpectedly bought from him, and his quitting it at Christmas next was insisted on by the purchaser.’ The buyers were members of the Heath family who were to build a successful brewing and banking business over the next 70 years.

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The Bell inn once occupied much of the western side of the High Street. (Image: Holmes) The Bell inn, on the western side of the High Street, had been so-named ever since its re-building by Magdalene College, Oxford, in 1534, a replacement to ‘Le Belle’ on the same site but it seems incoming landlords were able to re-name inns if they so pleased. Although ‘purchased’ and ‘bought’ are the terms used, both his first two inns were surely leased by Marcer.  Certainly, the Bell inn was owned and leased out by Magdalene College well into the 19th century and if the London Street building was wholly owned by Richard Marcer, why would he have been forced to sell it against his will?

The Bell, now re-named the Star and Garter, was used for the registering and showing of racehorses to be run at Andover racecourse on Andover Down. It seems to have been a course that was short-lived, as any reports cease after the 1770s. 

The first directory to show who were the traders, innkeepers and the more important residents of the town was the Andover entry in the Hampshire Directory of 1784 which states that Richard Marcer was postmaster and occupier of the Star and Garter inn. The traditional historical narrative has been that having taken on the license of the Bell in 1771, he re-named it the Star and Garter and that when he died in 1786, his widow then sold the lease in 1788 and moved over the street to the present Star and Garter, taking the name with her. The date 1788 does signal the final closure of the Bell, which had already been steadily reduced in size from 1783 onwards, with four shops gradually taking the place of the east wing of the building that faced the High Street. This left an inner forecourt behind the new shops, entered through an archway, and the remaining part of the inn beyond that. As the leaseholder of the entire building, Richard Marcer benefited financially as each part of the lease was divided and separated from the original. 

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The third Star and Garter, c.1905, as we know it today. (Image: Cosser, Southampton) The Bell inn once occupied much of the western side of the High Street. (Image: Holmes) However, there is a problem with that scenario. An advertisement for the auction of Dear Farm, Tangley, to take place in August 1783, was placed in the Hampshire Chronicle in July of that year. The auction itself was ‘at the Old White Hart Inn, being the house of Richard Marcer at Andover’. The old name for the building which we know now as the Star and Garter was indeed the Old White Hart, in consequence of there being another White Hart, in Bridge Street. If Richard Marcer was already the landlord in 1783, it follows that the move across the street was at least five years earlier than thought and consequently took place during Richard’s lifetime.

In 1916, Arthur Bennett wrote a very detailed history of the owners and leaseholders of the Bell inn, which he called Mutations of a House. His colleague Edmund Parsons was then the owner of the department store Parsons and Hart which took up almost the entire site of the Bell’s earlier frontage. He had inherited all the deeds relating to the property, which are now in Hampshire Record Office. The deeds and documents show that the inn closed completely in 1788 when the remaining part of the lease was indeed sold to cooper William Blake, by Jane Marcer, Richard’s widow, after his death in 1786. But it seems there is no actual evidence that Jane Marcer was still living at the Bell, merely that she was at the Star and Garter a few years later, and is assumed to have moved there in 1788. But would an 18th century widow in Andover have made such a career move, taking on the greater responsibilities of a larger and more prestigious hostelry? Is it not more likely that she was already in residence, having gone there with her husband during his lifetime?

Bennett does write that Marcer borrowed a sum of money in 1783 but he does not say how much or what it was for. In order to obtain the money, he used his lease of the old Bell as security. It seems likely that he used the borrowed capital to buy or lease his third Star and Garter, while retaining the lease of the previous property and subsequently selling off parts to finance the debt. Such splitting of a lease (a sort of 18th century asset-stripping) was common practice and seems to have been accepted by the property owners. Indeed, Magdalene College must have been instrumental in the conversion of what was ultimately their property into individual shops. And once work began to the frontage, would the old inn, tucked in behind an 18th century building site, be any longer a viable concern? Maybe all parties thought that the inn had had its day?

A 1783 date for moving across the street ties in quite well with Richard Marcer’s role of postmaster in 1784 - not in premises that were obscured behind a construction of new shops but in the much more imposing building at the bottom of the High Street, which we know was the post office a few years later. That 1784 directory states that he was landlord of the Star and Garter but I think this must be the final inn of that name and not the old Bell. The name Old White Hart does not appear in the 1784 list of inns because it was now called by its new name. Such a flurry of commercial activity by Marcer in 1783-4 did not anticipate his death just two years later but his wife Jane then carried on the role as landlady and postmistress in his place, taking charge of the letter Jane Austen wrote in May 1799.

If you are interested in local history, why not join Andover History and Archaeology Society? Details can be found at andoverlocalhistoryarchaeology.uk.