Can You Identify These Locations? (26)

Published on: 28 Feb, 2012
Updated on: 28 Feb, 2012

by David Rose

A number of readers kindly left a reply to last week’s mystery photo locations – see their comments if you click back to Locations 25.

The first picture showed Quarry Street, looking towards the Jolly Farmer pub.

Anthony Bullen correctly identified the building with the ‘BEDS’ sign as the Good Intent lodging house. Yes, it was indeed a doss house for “working men such as hawkers, pedlers and others generally working outdoors”.

It could only have been a little better than the casual ward of the old Guildford Workhouse in Warren Road – now preserved as The Spike.

My good friend Fred Smith (who has left a couple of replies this week to other Through Time stories) recently recalled to me his memories of the Good Intent lodging house – not that he ever stayed there!

Fred is a retired policeman and told me that when he was a young PC, in about the late 1950s, he had to go there on one occasion. He remembers it as a place that even then was like something out of Charles Dickens’ novel.

He says it was a horrible place; you could hardly see through the windows which were thick with dust and grime. In the room he went into on the ground floor were a number of rickety beds, with just one old fireplace to provided heating for the room.

The second picture showed what was the Conservative Club on the corner of Castle Street and Chapel Street. A number of readers recognised it as that, and that later it was the Singer sewing machine shop (on the ground floor).

Bernard Parke emailed me direct with some extra details. He says that it was a former Speaker of the House of Commons, Jack Weatherill, who had the job of moving the Conservatives out.

Bernard added that the Tories were once at 9 High Street (changed to 86 when the High Street was renumbered).

“They were kicked out of there because they drank beer and the smell made the lady members swoon.”

Top picture this week is another town centre street in the 1900s. Not that easy to identify I have to admit. As a clue, all the buildings on the left-hand side were pulled down in about the 1950s. I think all of those on the right remain, with some alterations, of course.

The picture below is another street near the town centre. There are at least two photos (maybe more) taken from the same position at the same time showing what was a horse parade through the town. It was called Horse Day and was in 1910. Stan Newman retells the story in his book Guildford Life Past and Present (Breedon Books, 2008).

If you think you know the answers, leave a reply below. All will be posted on to the website in about a week’s time, with my comments shortly after in the next article.

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