Responses to Where Is This? No.91

1. Bernard Parke Reply

   January 9, 2014 at 8:56 am

   1) From the roof garden of the old A&N (now House of Fraser). About the late fifties.

   2) When I was known in Guildford as ” Mr Barclaycard” in the seventies, I had to visit, what was then a rather fine dress shop, in the upper High Street. The fashion shop was called “Maison Jane” or something like that.
2. John Lomas Reply

   January 9, 2014 at 5:32 pm

   Harvey’s Roof Garden cafe/restaurant, (have you got another photo showing the tippler fountains?). The spire is the North St Methodist Church on the corner of Woodbridge Road. The large roof area to the right of it would be the cinema and the building behind that should be the Friary Meux brewery.

   I would guess at around about the late 50s early 60s as the gardens were designed after the sputnik orbits to symbolise that flight, they’re certainly before the late 60s as the gas holders are still there.
3. David and Ann bailey Reply

   January 9, 2014 at 6:23 pm

   The picture was taken from the roof garden restaurant of William Harveys in the High Street,which is know A&N, a lot of the buildings in the picture have all gone, the gas works, the Friary Meux brewery and the Methodist Church.

   The M&J was for a shop called Marian Jacks and it can be found over the art gallery that stands at the junction of High Street and North Street at the traffic lights.
4. Norman Hamshere Reply

   January 9, 2014 at 7:18 pm

   Photographed from Harvey’s, now House of Fraser, newly opened roof garden.
   Methodist church Friary brewery tower and the gas works are prominent. Judging by the unfinished state of the cathedral I would date this 1957/58.
5. Judy Oliver Reply

   January 9, 2014 at 10:35 pm

   The view is taken from the roof garden of what was then Harvey’s (I think), now House of Fraser. This roof garden was open to the public and my friends and I used to spend many a Saturday afternoon up there when we were teenagers. The gas holders in the background were in Woodbridge Road and I think the church on the left of the picture is the Methodist Church in North Street (no longer there).
6. Ray Springer Reply

   January 10, 2014 at 8:16 pm

   The photo was taken from the Jellicoe Roof Garden on top of what was then Harvey’s (now House of Fraser)
   The garden was installed in 1958 – it is my guess this picture was taken in the early sixties, probably 1961.
   The lady and the letters M and J are on the wall of the building opposite the junction with North Street, now occupied by Jo Clarks café and the Forest Gallery.
   The M and J stood for Marian Jacks who used to have this shop.
7. Ian Plowman Reply

   January 11, 2014 at 6:33 pm

   Photo taken from Roof Garden of House of Fraser which was then Harveys, year I would say 1961 – 63
8. Debra Stroud Reply

   January 11, 2014 at 6:54 pm

   This photo has been taken from Harvey’s roof garden cafe, now House Of Fraser. I don’t remember the casing around the cathedral but it could have been around 1956.
9. William O'Brien Reply

   January 12, 2014 at 5:03 pm

   Taken from roof garden, Harveys. You can see the gas works and Friary Brewery? I guess around 1957?

   MJ lady above Forest Gallery, Upper High Street?

   Looking forward to the answers.
10. Chris Townsend Reply

    January 12, 2014 at 5:39 pm

    The vintage photo was taken from an upper level of Harvey’s Roof Garden, which dates from 1958, designed by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe. Across the centre are the roofs of the Methodist Church (on the corner of North Street and Woodbridge Road) then Moffat’s, in the centre the Cinema, named “The Astor” in its later days, and next to it Gray’s Garage, I think.

    Beyond are the buildings of the Friary Brewery, with its chimney and tower. The gas holders were behind the Cattle Market on Woodbridge Road, close to its junction with Onslow Street, roughly where the Law Courts are today.

    Below the Cathedral hill is Guildford Park. Its white-painted houses were originally plain pebble-dashed, but painted over by the council in the ’50s. Construction of the Cathedral nave began in 1955 and it was consecrated in 1961. So I deduce that the photo dates between 1958 and 1961. Perhaps it was taken when the roof garden was newly-built.

    The mystery shop was Marian Jacks in Upper High Street, then numbered 150, next-but-one to Constitutional Hall. In 1930, besides the “ladies costumiers”, there was also a North Street branch, at the top corner of Commercial Road, but by 1934 there was just the High Street branch, selling “gowns and corsets”. In the 1950s they sold “corsets and lingerie”. Gammons was more our style!
11. David Smith Reply

    January 13, 2014 at 11:44 am

    It is on the facade of what is now the cafe Jo Clarks at the point in Upper High Street near the traffic lights junction with North Street.
    MJ – Marion Jacks: she was a very successful maker of women’s underwear in the 1920s and 1930s. Nowadays we would call her business lingerie; back then she was a corsetiere. She had her shop at this spot in Guildford. She became so successful that she opened another in Bond Street, London, in a building which is where Ferragamo now trade. She sold to royalty and fashionable women; manufacturing in Guildford.
12. Brian Holt Reply

    January 13, 2014 at 4:06 pm

    The photo was taken from the roof gardens of today’a House of Fraser store, with the Guildford Methodist Church just behind the gardens and to the right is the roof of the Guildford Cinema that change its name in 1959 to the Astor.
    The big building with the chimney is the Friary Brewery.
    In David Rose and Bernard Parke’s book Guildford Remember When, they write: “Building work restarted on the cathedral in the mid-50s, largely due to the efforts of a remarkable women, Eleonora Iredale. She was secretary of the New Cathedral Fund,and had a office at Diocesan House in Quarry Street.”
    That was where my mother and I cleaned her office, so we saw her most evenings.
    When she retired from the post in 1962, she had been responsible for raising about £660,000.
    All the staff at Diocesan House every year gave me a birthday cake and bricks for the cathedral, and Miss Iredale then asked my mother if she would clean the cathedral which she did until machines were too much for her.
    Work on the cathedral tower was not finished until mid-1960s.

    The next photo is above the Forest Gallery (Fine Art) shop in the Upper High Street, almost opposite the top of North Street.
13. Clitherow Kid (Peter Holt) Reply

    January 13, 2014 at 6:05 pm

    Photo 1 was taken from the rooftop gardens of what was then Harvey’s department store. I remember as a young boy seeing a notice displayed before going up to the roof garden that read ‘All Children Must be Accompanied by an Adult’. I think the photo was taken in the early 1960s.
    My chauffeur informs me that photo 2 is Forest Gallery in Upper High Street. If he is right can you send him a tin of car polish as a prize. Thank you.
14. Doug and Bill Reply

    January 14, 2014 at 11:55 am

    The view is from the top of Harvey’s roof garden in approx 1962 before it was Army & Navy (unsuprisingly they didn’t sell speedboats) which is now House of Fraser
    The M & J is above Forest Gallery in the High Street.
15. jeanne robbins Reply

    April 8, 2014 at 3:24 pm

    Marian Jacks was a haute couture establishment. Miss Jacks was a real person, my mother was apprenticed to the establishment in 1924. They made clothes for the Princess of Sarawack and also one of the British royals, although I can’t remember who. My mother said they made this royal a gold lame evening gown. Miss Jacks was a very hard task mistress indeed. Apprentices spent the first four weeks of their employment picking pins up from the wooden planked flooring of the work rooms.
16. Dave Chillistone Reply

    October 29, 2014 at 1:27 am

    Having read all the replies regarding the view over Guildford; yes, it is taken from the upper level of the roof garden at the William Harvey (as it was then) department store. As to the date, it was definitely 60s not 50s because on the date the cathedral was consecrated (17 May 1961) the tower hadn’t been built. The scaffolding and shroud seen in the photograph were erected to protect the workforce whilst the tower was built. To narrow it down: it’s after 1961 because the tower didn’t exist at all at the consecration, and its before 1963 when the gold angel was added to the completed tower.
17. Dave Chillistone Reply

    October 29, 2014 at 11:15 am

    I’ve been thinking further about when this picture was taken and perhaps it can be narrowed down to May 1963. Here goes! The winter of 1962/3 was very hard with the last of the snow not disappearing until March (certainly so in Stoughton, where I grew up). As a consequence, spring was very late that year (my abiding memory of my father’s funeral in April 1963 was of there being no leaves on the trees, no birds singing, and a cold and penetrating damp). There are few leaves on the trees to be seen at the horizon, except at the extremities of the branches, which is where leaves open first. At a rough guess from the sun azimuth and elevation angles (note that the Methodist church in the foreground wasn’t built exactly east-west) it was around 1pm, some time during the first half of May. Also, the cathedral tower appears to be complete and the shrouding no longer covers the top; perhaps the photo catches it mid-dismantling. Anyway; 1pm-ish, first half of May, in whatever year the angel was added (1963, I think) would be my reasoned view.
18. Bernard Parke Reply

    October 30, 2014 at 12:16 pm

    The sheltering caused havoc with television reception and complaints were made to Dean Clarkson as viewers had trouble following Coronation Street !