The medieval presence of a High Street (formerly North Street), West Street and East Street begs the question, what happened to South Street? The answer is that there was one - it was Quay Street. Mapping evidence suggests that the name was changed in the 1870s, perhaps because Portland Street began to effectively do the same job.
The road became part of the A32 in 1922, but it is awfully narrow, with barns built up against it rather than the houses with large gardens that other main roads had. By the 1940s it was sharing this role with Portland Street, both now forming part of the primary route network. By 1981 it had been replaced for through traffic by Wallington Way. It is now designated C366.
The road starts directly opposite where West Street used to meet Church Path. This wasn't a coincidence: a key role for Quay Street was to allow people to travel between the quays and St Peter and St Paul Church. It starts outside the pub which was called The Bugle, which still has a milestone on the side of it (pictured) saying "FAREHAM: 72 miles from London, 5 miles to Gosport Gates" - a difficult decision! These milestones were a common sight along what's now the A32, and probably can still be found in a few places, but this one stands out for being in the town centre.
Today this narrow section has single alternating line of traffic, though it is effectively northbound only. The narrow section had been made southbound only in the 1940s, reversing to northbound only after Western Way was built in the 1970s. There was briefly talk of widening this narrow road in the 1980s, an idea which was poorly received, given the amount of new roads that had been built already.
Quay Street was mainly industrial, being home to corn merchants, warehouses and yards. The apartments at the top end replace G.A. Day's hardware shop, while the service yard on the other side was previously one of many haphazard segments added to the Market Quay car park. The fire station was in this area until 1910 too.
Continuing south, the police station is built on the site of Clark's Yard, a former builder's yard and engineering works which had been built of Fareham Red Bricks, and before that it was cottages. The fire station was accessed through here and a foundry was opposite. The police station moved into the new brick building from their site on Osborn Road South.
Beyond here, it was mostly cottages, some of which had been converted in to shops and businesses, and the Chequers Inn at the far end (which survived the first phase of roadworks but not the second). Opposite the Inn was the footpath to allotments and Bath Lane Park.
One gap between buildings became an access to the cattle market.
Tap these photos to enlarge them.
Standing further back, roughly where the bend is today. Note the vintage sign is explaining that its downhill (southbound) only.
The far end of the road, pictured in 1983. The police station has been built and the bend to the roundabout is open, with the end section (now under Tesco) already looking derelict.
Those remaining buildings viewed from across the roundabout in 1988 (picture credits)
Old barns, attached to the cottages, were taken down in the 1970s as part of Fareham's grand plans to modernise itself. One of these was found to have a tunnel leading to the quay, which is likely to have been for smuggling. Some of these buildings were replaced by car parking. The diversion of the road to meet the new roundabout left a small stub which was also used mostly for car parking, with people parking around the foundations of buildings which no longer existed. At the end was Kingdom Hall, which was taken down in 2007.
Most of this area has been lost to the construction of the associated Quay Street Roundabout and an extra foundry site that became Tesco. Some of these became one of the town's first car parks. Industrial buildings (converted houses) lay derelict for many years while Tesco were widely accused of hoarding the land, a practice they were known for elsewhere in the country during the economic heyday up to 2008.
The store was designed on the basis that supermarkets were going to keep getting busier. In reality, by the time it opened in 2011, interest in large supermarkets had peaked and as a result it has always felt quiet, soon cuting back on its opening hours and changing the tenants inside.
Before then, the road would have it continued under the railway arch and met Upper Wharf - when the road was redirected, Upper Wharf claimed some of its leftovers. Upper Wharf provided access to Upper Quay (and Bath Lane), one few surviving remnants of Fareham's history as a port. It would have once been a busy site trading various commodities, and used for shipbuilding too. The mostly new buildings along here replaced a couple more small cottages.
The Lafarge Aggregates building was originally Corys' Wharf filling station, serving the new roundabout which was briefly piped through the arches. Quay Street then merged with Portland Street to form Gosport Road. In its one way days, the road effectively split, giving choices of heading down to Gosport or back up to town.