As many residents will know, Westgate, along with St Pancras, was part of the Parliamentary encampment during the brief siege of Chichester by Colonel William Waller at Christmastide in December 1642, the first year of the Civil War. Christmas 2022 marked the 380th anniversary of this event.
Continue reading Hidden Westgate Histories 5: The Westgate Cannon (updated)
Retired traffic consultant Paul Wreyford has been a key expert assisting the four RAs concerned with the impacts of the Whitehouse Farm development. He has over forty years of detailed highway and transport design and construction experience, and assessing developers highway designs has been a major part of this.
Following the approval of the outline plan for the development, Paul is now preparing to consider the more detailed design proposals that should be coming from the developers.
Based on an article originally researched and compiled by Paula Chatfield of Parklands RA for her excellent Easter Trail series and published here by permission.
Always known as Westfield House, this is one of our older local buildings, built in the 1700s and extended in the early 1800s. When it was built, it was in the parish of New Fishbourne and not in Chichester at all!
The eastern end of Westgate seems such a perfect Georgian enclave, yet who would have thought standing in the street today, that Mount Lane has contained iconic 20th century buildings and still has an interior by Eric Gill’s brother?
Powell & Moya architects
Continue reading Hidden Westgate Histories 6: The Powell & Moya Bungalows
Changes to democratic representation at Chichester District Council
Re-design Westgate to Accommodate Everyone’s Needs Safely?
The City Council’s Cycle Infrastructure Design Workshop met on 1st October 2016 in St Paul’s Church. Unfortunately this clashed with our monthly Coffee Morning but several residents were able to attend, for which many thanks. By all accounts, some interesting and competent contributors had been brought in from outside but, as there are many conflicting opinions around this issue, the result of the day was inconclusive.
From early times, Westgate was on the main road from Portsmouth to Chichester. There had been a suburb of Westgate outside the city gate since the Middle Ages, with a mixture of terraced houses and some larger ones dominated by the brewery and the tannery.
This article appears as a complement to the one published earlier this year
From Brewing to Business Services
The Westgate Brewery (now home to Mercers, a pensions firm) was founded in 1751 probably by John Dearling and from 1793, taken on by William and Edward Humphrey. The brewery’s association with the Henty family seems to date from 1827. Henty’s was an old-established firm and it can be traced back on paper at least to 1855 when George Henty already owned about a hundred properties in West Sussex and Hampshire.
Did you know that the red telephone box on the corner of Parklands Road and Westgate is protected, and listed grade II? It was listed in July 1995 by Historic England, sixty years after it had been erected.
