Along with no 25, no 23 is one of a pair of workman’s cottages
Roy Morgan writes:
“The house is recorded as far back as 1379 and is also mentioned 1570. The pair of cottages are recorded in Land tax from 1780 and are shown on Gardner’s map of 1797”.
No. 23 specifically occurs twice elsewhere in the story of this street:
The Battle of Jutland
Stoker Petty Officer Frederick William May married Florence Jane Myall of 23 Westgate (previously numbered 10) in the summer of 1913, aged 29.
Just three years later, at midnight on 31st May 1916, he was drowned along with 856 fellow crew members, when the armoured cruiser HMS Black Prince was sunk at the famous battle of Jutland. Twenty-five ships in total were sunk on both sides that night, in just 16 and a half hours, between the hours of 4pm and 8.30am on the following day, June 1st. 8,648 men died that night, of whom 6,097 were British.
Frederick’s name appears on the war memorial at St Bartholomew’s church. Florence is registered in the 1921 census as a charwoman and head of household. Her sister was also there but she must have been the dominant one of the two.
A murder-suicide
It turns out that Florence’s sister, Edith Lily Myall, was the daily help destine to find the bodies of William George and May Holt, following the murder/suicide committed by William. Previously of no. 20 Westgate, this couple were found dead at ‘Chesleigh’ on the Stockbridge Road on Sunday 6th December 1931 and Florence was called to appear as a witness at the inquest on the following Wednesday.
Demolition of no. 25
Yes you read that right, but it is a quirk of the old numbering. There was a property on the western side of Mount Lane, between today’s 27 Westgate and the church. It was demolished in 1888 to widen Mount Lane. This was after the railway station had opened and it was planned to build a road across Westgate Fields, direct from the Portsmouth Road to the station in the south. This plan never came to fruition however.
There was a further scheme many years later, in the nineteen sixties, to build a massive gyrator roundabout at Westgate, similar to the ones built at all three other gates, using Mount Lane as one of the vast quadrants. This never came to pass either and thank goodness. It would have left all that part of the street to the east marooned in the middle of a colossal roundabout, destroying the historic symmetry of our neighbourhood and making life unbearable for the inhabitants.
Richard Brownfield 2025 reviewed by CH