Certain sections in this entry are copied with permission from The Building of Georgian Chichester by local historian Alan Green.
The Westgate house bo. 17 “was added to number 15 in about 1787 – on a more modest scale.”
The property “is a typical Regency rebuild. Its three-storey single frontage under a slate roof is stuccoed and the front door is recessed within an elliptical arch and approached by steps up from the street.
It is another example of how adjacent properties in Westgate ‘flow’ around each other,” this one “backing onto the garden of No. 19, its neighbour to the west, and having only a tiny courtyard to itself.”
What Alan Green calls “flow” can also be observed between nos. 44 to 12 on the north side of the street and between Nos. 27 to 37 on the south side further down. Residents on the north side are of the view that this curious division of their gardens and frontages has a lot to do with the Brewery, manipulating the accommodation over time and dividing up the properties to get more people in. This kind of ‘flow’ was still being repeated on Westgate up to the 1980s, when the developer of the Georgian Priory divided the gardens and frontages of nos. 1 to 9 somewhat arbitrarily, in order to create more individual properties to sell than the visual street frontage implies.
John Drew
The house was known as Drew House and the current owner has kindly restored the label.
John Drew was a prominent figure in 1780s Chichester, an English banker and landowner born on 12 August 1734 in Chichester. He was the eldest son of John Drew and Margaret Haskell.
Drew became a significant figure in Chichester’s financial and civic life. In banking, Drew was a partner in the Chichester Old Bank, which underwent several name changes during his tenure, including to Griffiths, Chaldecott, Drew & Trew in 1783 and later more simply Griffiths, Drew & Co. This bank eventually became part of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
In civic society, Drew served as an alderman and was elected mayor of Chichester in 1785 and again in 1798. Additionally, he was appointed High Sheriff of Sussex in 1791.
He married three times: Lucy Hart (1763-1774), who died young; Agnes, Lady Frankland (1781-1783), also deceased shortly after their marriage; and Mary Powlett Drinkwater (1804-1808), who outlived him. He had one son, also named John Drew, who reached adulthood.
John Drew died in 1808, leaving a legacy in both banking and local governance in Chichester. (Wikipedia)
Compiled by Hicks & Brownfield 2025