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photograph

1946

LMGLM:1997.60.7

Summary: photograph, bw photograph from series showing the two sides of the High Street, here including the Town Hall and the premises of Plumbly's Stores, grocers at 116 High Street, Lymington, Lymington and Pennington, Hampshire, 1946Summary: From a series of photographs of Lymington High Street taken by local photographer Frederick Drew, and later published in...

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Description

Summary: photograph, bw photograph from series showing the two sides of the High Street, here including the Town Hall and the premises of Plumbly's Stores, grocers at 116 High Street, Lymington, Lymington and Pennington, Hampshire, 1946

Summary: From a series of photographs of Lymington High Street taken by local photographer Frederick Drew, and later published in R Coles's 'Lymington High Street Then and Now'. A transcript of the captions from the book, briefly noting changes between 1946 and 1976, is filed with the photographs. The negatives from which these prints were made appear to have themselves been made from earlier prints. The owner of the negatives also donated a number of spare prints which appear, by their sharper quality, to come from this earlier series.

Identification note: Mrs Martha Earley who bequeathed Nos. 117 and 118, High Street, to the corporation for the purpose of using them as municipal offices but the premises as they stood proved unsuitable for that purpose. A new building was required and in response to this her sister gave cash for the construction of a dedicated town hall. The architects were Vincent and Smith of Southampton and the contractors who carried out the work was Samuel Elgar from across the street. It was described by Pevsner in his 1967 survey of Hampshire buildings as “Three bays, brick and much stone. Baroque, with a cupola.” This new town hall was constructed to accommodate the administrative services for the Borough of Lymington as constituted in 1888 whose boundary matched that of the ecclesiastical parish and with a population of about 4,400. It cannot have been long before some pressures on space were felt but with the enlargement of the borough in 1932 the population more than tripled to reach 15,430 and the pressure on space became significantly worse, demanding enlarged facilities. Despite its restricted size, the town hall served the borough of Lymington for 50 years, but in 1962 the decision was made to build a new, larger town hall on a site in Avenue Road.

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