Brand Street

Whilst it may well feel as if constant change is here to stay, it’s true that change is not a steady continuous process, but one which proceeds in fits and starts. Brand Street has seen several sudden developmental shifts which, taking the long view, make it seem rather like a beach in terms of customer appeal: now at high water, and now at low.

The street became home to the Methodist Chapel in 1834.

The construction of the first Town Hall in 1840 no doubt drew many to the street – the town hall was criticised before completion for being too large, and shortly after completion for not being large enough – as it was the home to many concerts and public meetings. Twenty years later, the Public Library was built next door, and in 1868 the Mechanics Institute and Public Library was also developed almost opposite. The building now occupied by Swintons and The Lunch Box was built as the façade of the Workman’s Hall, and was soon occupied by James Hunt’s Coffee House. The eschewing of alcohol was a major attraction of the site, for by the 1890s it was formally known as Hunt’s Temperance Hotel, and the scholars at the Girls’ School took some of their cookery classes there, but many must have perceived the irony of the Temperance Hotel standing but two doors up the road from The Dog pub.

There were few other shops in the street save Chalkley’s bike shop.

The new century saw an opportunity to rectify the privations of the Old Town Hall, and a new one was built. This was built not only on the site of Mr Jelly’s tinplate works, but cheek by jowl with the Workman’s Hall, which today survives as the Gym. Long seen as the magnum opus of Geoffrey Lucas, the architect of the local brewing family, it perhaps should be seen as a minor work of E. W. Mountford. Mountford certainly worked with Lucas on the Town Hall, but Lucas’ career stayed with small scale buildings and housing: in 1905 Mountford achieved his zenith as architect of the Old Bailey in London.

The other product of the new century was the Post Office, purpose-built in 1903, just east of the Chapel. By then this was town’s third post office, and must have brought much new business to the street which until then had few shops. Next door down the hill Odie & Marshall built their drapery shop in 1904, no doubt to capitalise on increasing business. Thereafter, small shops gradually spread up the south side of the street, and there was stasis until the demolition of the Methodist Chapel in 1964 and the construction of what was to be Sainsbury’s in the early 1970s. This in turn was followed by the demolition of Latchmore’s shop, studio and apartments which had long been occupied by the Urban District Council, and 1981 saw that building replaced by Latchmore Court as a suite of offices.

Every twenty to thirty years has seen a sudden shift in the pattern of the streets commercial or social activity. Once again, twenty-five years after the construction of Latchmore Court there is another sudden shift with the change of use of the Old Town Hall to a bar, and the potential of a community use of the New Town Hall. And again there’s an irony in the use of the Old Town Hall as a bar, opposite the former Temperance Hotel!

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