The following properties to the south side of Westgate were demolished in 1963 to make way for the Avenue de Chartres and the Chichester inner ring road.
For information concerning the lost buildings to the north side of Westgate, please click here.
The White Horse Inn
Looking west through the site of the old West Gate. The White Horse Inn (actually pink here!) is on the left when the bottleneck was being demolished in 1962. The Swan Inn is in the distance beyond the entrance on the right to Orchard Street. (Photo: John Templeton)
This photograph should perhaps best be consulted after you have read about old no.1 Westgate. Here, in glorious colour, (thanks to respected Cicestrian John Templeton who took a myriad photos of the demolitions in Chichester during 1962) can clearly be seen the stone pillar of the the West Gate, Hookers Ice Cream shop and the now demolished White Horse Inn.
It has to be said that the view westwards down Westgate gives a very good idea of what the vista was before the ring road and its roundabout went in. Demolitions on the north side have begun but the Swan Inn that is now the Crate and Apple is very visible, as is the huge blank wall of Richmond House. The view of the early houses curving away on the north side of Westgate right down to no. 44 is not that different to today – now a protected view under the Conservation Area – but the awning over Dearings sweet shop at no. 40 indicates it was still in operation.
The original White Horse Inn was destroyed during the Civil War (1642) but had been rebuilt before 1673 and is described in detail in the inventory of John Scott in 1677:
“It had a little parlour, kitchen, hall, Bull Chamber, Sun Chamber, shuffleboard room, lodging chamber, Half Moon garret loft, other little rooms and two more garrets, a cellar and a brewhouse.”
On the 3rd of May 1733 this marriage settlement was drawn up for William Knott Jnr. (son of the publican William Knott Snr.), on his marriage to Sarah Pannett, the daughter of a bricklayer from Chichester:
“Moiety (Half share) of freehold and leasehold messuage, brewhouse, malthouse, stable yard and gate room called the White Horse Inn, near Westgate, in St. Bartholomew, Chichester, late in occ. of David Wells, but now in occ. of William Head and the said William Knott, which said moiety were devised by John Cramborne by will, 22 January 1695, unto Francis, wife of the said William Knott, snr.”
and
“Moiety of ½a. land in St. Bartholomew, Chichester, between the said White Horse inn, the ancient cartway leading from the Westgate to the place where the Deanery House lately stood all along under the walls of the city on the East, the Lavant on the West, which said land was leased, 18 August 1717, by the Dean of Chichester to Henry Smart of Chichester, free mason, and the said William Knott, Snr. for the lives of Henry Cramborne, Frances, wife of William Knott, snr. and William Knott, jnr., at the annual rent of 3s.”
In about 1825, behind the White Horse Inn, the ‘Guardians of the Poor’ built five houses “for the accommodation of those in poverty.”
The building was a Dean and Chapter freehold property, let at one time to a Thomas Churcher. The Inn survived as an alehouse, through to the late 19th century and was demolished in 1963.
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No. 2 Westgate
The White Horse PH (far left) and 2 Westgate, both demolished for Westgate Fields Road (now Avenue de Chartres) in 1963. The old coach house to the left of No.2 has become No.1 The Courtyard and the gateway preserved.
The early history of 2 Westgate is unknown but we do know it was was leased by the Theological College from the Church commissioners in 1950, for extra accommodation.
In 1960 however, plans were agreed to create a ring road around the city. These were to lead to mass demolitions across the city, causing a huge outcry and eventually leading to the founding of the Chichester Society.
As far as no.2 was concerned, this road plan required the loss of a strip of land to the east of the Theological College to push the ring road through. This included the sites of the White Horse Inn, 2 Westgate and the garages, plus some land beneath the Roman walls.
The White Horse Inn went in 1963 and a notice to quit number 2 was served in 1964. Compensation of £5,800 was accepted and the property demolished.
St Bartholomew’s Vicarage, Mount Lane
There is some disagreement when the vicarage of St Bartholomew’s was demolished. From early maps, which do not always contain accurate detail of each property, a large building onto Westgate itself and identified as a vicarage (in the centre of the extract below, to the left of the St Sepulchre’s site which was just a burying ground without a church). This building reputedly was demolished when the Shippam estate was built.
Later memories have it that there was a vicarage attached to today’s no 27, which was demolished in 1888 when there was a project that required the widening of Mount Lane. This was to provide direct access to Chichester station from the Portsmouth Road from that turning, by building a road south across Westgate Fields. Certainly, by the time Prior the architect moved into no. 27, that building was no longer there and the road was never built.
Then there is documentary evidence that number 74 Westgate was built as the St Bartholomew’s “parsonage” in the late Victorian period. And somehow, in the 1940s, Tony Keating distinctly remembers attending Sunday School in the vicarage situated in Mount Lane opposite the church graveyard. Was that no 27?
Until more research is done it can only be surmised that several buildings are involved in these stories, perhaps all used by the church at one time or another. Whatever the truth, a property deed for a vicarage in this area does exist (and, for the interested, is a fine example of an early Westgate property deed). This building survived the civil war, while St Sepulchre’s Church did not.
The Property Deed for the Vicarage
The age of this document has not been given and the description of the plot in question takes a lot of unravelling, but it can be ascertained where this property was situated (as witnessed by the part in bold):
“The prebend, parsonage house and garden of St Bartholomew, Chichester, formerly in the tenure of Henry Brown now occupied by Thomas (?) also the parsonage close, formerly in the tenure of Richard Page – all situate outside the Westgate adjoining the “Kings Highway’ on the north, a little cartway [Mount Lane] belonging to the Dean leading out of the said street through the Lavant course into the parsonage close on the south and a little plot of land formerly Thomas Bennett’s then John Wither’s on the west, the said parsonage close bounded in part by Stephen Vivions’ and John Turners’ and then John Abbot’s, by a garden formerly Edward Finds, by a garden formerly William Tolpetts (3 Westgate) on the north St. Bartholomew’s church yard and garden, in part by a garden formerly, by the Deanery lands on the south, by the lands formerly in the tenure of Edward Undershill (The Tannery) now occupied by Thomas Booker on the east, and by lands formerly John Aylwin’s and now Ellis Good’s (once William Harrison’s) on the west, with lease also of all tithes, oblations and emoluments, of the Dean’s mill with appurtenances, of 4 acres of arable and 2 acres of meadow in the west suburbs of Chichester near the mill bounded by 2 meadows formerly in the tenure of Dennis Peel on the north (all these premises being formerly occupied by William Fletcher and Daniel Duffield) together with 1 acre called the Hop-Garden belonging to the Deanery in the south suburbs bounded on the north by the south walls of Chichester and on the west by a plot of ground formerly occupied by John Scott; exception of the tithes from Deanery Farm, the moiety of the toft where the Dean’s mill formerly stood and the moiety of the said mill pond and dashing pool, the term of the lease being for 1 year and the rent of 1 peppercorn”.