Arguably the most important street in the town, West Street forms part of the route between Southampton and Portsmouth. It was designated A27 in 1922, and became a major trunk route in 1937, ensuring that the final word on all matters rested with the Ministry of Transport in London. It lost both these statuses in the 1970s after Western Way opened, and is now designated the less catchy title C366 - even the part you can't drive on.
It is the single street from which the rest of Fareham grew. Historically it was a dirty road, dusty and littered with faeces and sewerage. In to the 20th century, it was initially known as the "wood block road". It became dominated by traffic, to the point where shoppers were finding it impossible to cross. The street was dubbed the "danger mile" in 1956, as drivers had to watch for so many pedestrians. While unpleasant, Fareham thrived on the bustle, but eventually things had to change.
Other boasts for West Street include it hosting Fareham's first Christmas light display in 1956: £650 was spent on the installation which cost £38 a week to operate.
The Guide to West Street Shops
West End
Today West Street starts at the Station Roundabout, meeting The Avenue (historically called Tichfield Road) and Station Approach. The original start of the road would have been somewhere here, probably tied in to the West End tram terminus.
The tram terminus was an accident blackspot of its time, not helped by it having no buffers, causing vehicles to overrun. The trams ran from 1906 until 1929 and ran every 15 minutes. Confrontations between trams and cattle became big problems on this street.
This part of town is now slightly detached from West End (which is better associated with the area around Bishopsfield Road, the bigger one in Southampton or the even bigger one in London), but that is what it was known as, and there was the West End Inn to prove it. This was moved in the 1940s, and then knocked down to build the roundabout in 1972. The street name doesn't come from that, but simply from the fact that it is the main road west. That said, there was a short gap in development between the hotels around the Station Approach junction (originally a sharply angled t-junction), and the actual shops along West Street, which didn't begin until where Crescent Road is today, so it's possible that the road didn't actually stretch that far.
Houses on the north side were built in stages at the end of the 19th century, while the south side was never really properly filled in, with a garage coming along in the 1940s.
Crescent Road was once a crescent-shape (albeit with a lengthy extension at one end for access to the tennis courts which became more housing), but the western entrance was cut-off when the houses there were demolished. The Gillies, and the path leading to Redlands, has been there at least as long as the railway has. Houses were added here at the very start of the 20th century, along with a coaching firm. The houses were used mainly by naval officers and their families, and some of them had the ground floor converted into shops.
The section through here wouldn't have been that different all those years ago, except perhaps with a greater variety of shops and trees lining the pavement. The large numbers of small shops down this end all lasted until the late 1970s, when the shopping centre opened and directed people away from this end of town.
On the corner of the Trinity Street junction stood the Royal Oak pub (with barn), now the Volunteer Centre, with a grand restaurant opposite. Some of the restaurants around here, such as the Wimpy Bar and Tsung Sing, were the first of their kind. Holy Trinity Church was built in the mid 1830s and gained its distinctive spire in 1841, but this was removed in 1992.
This junction became the focus of complaints about not being able to cross the road in 1960; the authorities insisted that it was more important to keep traffic moving. At one stage even building escalators was considered. Traffic lights were finally added here and all along the road in 1965, as high levels of through traffic were making it difficult for cars to join the road. The Grove Road junction was due to get traffic lights too.
The one way system at Trinity Street would have probably been introduced in the late 1970s to manage shopping centre traffic.
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Town Centre
Here, the road began to widen, with the main tramway still running down the middle. On the corner of Osborn Road South was a large butchers, now several shops including a bank. A shoemaker stood where King's Road joins today. Many of the buildings here were still houses, with front gardens, which have proven useful as the pavement was quite narrow.
Lord Arthur Lee - with the Wetherspoons pub named after him - was elected MP for Fareham in 1900. In 1921 he donated Chequers to the country for Prime Ministers to use, and the building next to the pub is called Chequers House.
The main body of West Street carried two cinemas which were icons of their time. The grand Embassy stood close to McDonald's today, opened in 1938 replacing the Alexandra Theatre from 1906, and it closed in 1983. The Alexandra Theatre itself replaced the Electrical Threatre. Savoy Cinema stood where Woolworth's (now Family Bargains) was, opened in 1933 and cost £25,000 (£1.4million in 2012) to build, and closed in 1959 - it had the added benefit of a restaurant. The two were almost always run by the same company. The associated Savoy Buildings is now one of the most dramatic buildings in the street, originally intended to be a mini shopping complex, and home to the original Woolworths.
Westbury Manor, now the town's museum, was built in the 18th century as a workhouse. It was home to Dame Madeleine Eva Waistell and was sold to Fareham Council in 1932. One document in 1933 has the building scheduled for demolition, to be replaced b shops. Instead it was used as a council building before they were all moved to the new civic offices in 1972. With the building unused, it was listed and became a museum in 1990. In World War II it functioned as an Air Raid Control Centre!
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Pedestrian Precinct
Today almost all traffic turns down Hartlands Road. In the 1970s this would have been for up (northwards, inwards) traffic only, with down (southwards, outwards) traffic continuing until the erstwhile Portland Street.
At the Portland Street junction (roughly where TK Maxx is today) was the original town bus station, more of a yard by today's standards, located in the south-western corner, which was built by Hants & Dorset in 1931 at a cost of £8,000. It was built on the site of Thackery Cottage and a library which was built in an old house. Responsibility for the bus station fell to Provincial in 1983, who were bought out in 1987. The bus station was demolished in 1993 as the town's plans would have had it isolated. . Prior to buses, the tramway to Gosport turned down Portland Street.
By the 1960s this was a signalised junction, with West Street itself being a dual carriageway, but by the 1980s all traffic had to turn south as the road east of here was for pedestrians only, and in approximately 1993 the whole of West Street was pedestrianised, leaving only the small stub up to Nationwide.
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Turn around, 10 years later. Woolworths have moved, traffic lights control the exit from the bus station
The same view in 1998. The road has decorated but still exists as far as Portland Street (picture credits)
In 1835, one of the new buildings built to symbolise Fareham's move from small village was Portland Chambers, which then became the Town Hall, Corn Exchange, Portland Hall, a post office, a bank (Portsmouth/Trustee's Savings Bank) and a solicitor's. It has housed a library, reading rooms, lecture rooms, and meeting rooms.
Alongside, a gap in today's buildings would have provided access to the cattle market - in the 18th century this would have happened on West Street itself, but disruption and runaway animals saw that it was moved offsite. Somewhere in this area was a pen for owners to claim their escaped cattle, subject to paying the appropriate fee (think 'car pound of the 1900s'). This, in case you couldn't tell, is where the Market Quay complex takes its name. Market Quay was built in 2005 to replace what was mostly car parks and dilapidated buildings until then. Within the devlopment is Cremer Mall, which leads to the Falklands Arch memorial, which was opened by Margaret Thatcher in 2007.
Prior to the shopping centre opening, there was an alleyway here called Western Lane which lead to the library and dentist, hall and unemployment centre, and before that The Flying Angel Seafarers Club.
As a sign of how much Fareham once relied on West Street, the original Price's School was here, on the south side, and that was replaced by a fire station in 1910. The school was built on the instruction of William Price's will, who wanted the house where he had lived to be used as a school for poor, local children. This happened, and it had an excellent reputation, before opening to boys only. It then moved to Park Lane in 1906.
The children's play area here has been moved slightly and re-built a few times, but there has been one since the road was closed in the 1970s.
Cawte's Place served a number of smal buildings, which were knocked down in the 1950s. The Cawte Brothers had taken over the 19th century Crown Brewery in 1870. At the start of the 20th century, this became The Crown Inn.
An un-captioned photo, but it is most likely the central shopping centre entrance being built in the 1970s.
The Quay Street junction in the late 1950s, where the precinct ends today. Lots of street furniture here.
Up to the Quay Street junction, the road became adapted to allow for parking on either side and down the middle. At one point there may have been buildings down the middle to facilitate trading. Quay Street was another "down" road, changing to "up" in the early 1980s, after pedestrianisation, which left another short stub of West Street accessible for parking. This was removed in 1999 to create today's corner, and an inbound bus route was created at the same time. Church Path met opposite, now consumed by the shopping centre. The Pyle's family bakery lent its name to this, becoming Pyle's Alley. The Pyle family owned several stores in this street, but the bakery became a Tesco. It was Paragon Hotel and, before that, White Hart pub, one of many pubs on this street. A second Tesco opened on the site of what is now Argos. Tesco-isation not a new thing then!
This takes us to the end of the road, where as is common in many medieval towns, West Street meets High Street at a central trading point, and it continues to Portsmouth as East Street.