Reminding me of “Withnail and I” when they go on holiday by accident, have you ever been to a town by mistake? I mean we had no intention of visiting Marlborough last weekend but we ended up in the lovely Wiltshire town without the intention of doing so. The thing is, Hungerford, our planned destination for the day was practically inaccessible, the High Street being closed and so we followed the diversion signs, which kept on leading us further away from the town.
Eventually we found ourselves driving through Savernake Forest, which was all very well but how do we get back to Hungerford?!
We kept on driving a little further along the A4, Old Bath Road, finding ourselves in Marlborough, where we decided to park up and explore instead!
I’ve long been contemplating exploring the places along both the River Kennet and indeed the Bath Road, maybe writing something about the journey, the history, the places and of course documenting it all in photographic form along the way. So here is the first unofficial article in that project, like some form of serialised book.
So let’s talk about the featured photograph, is it part of an old Gaol? What is it exactly? The truth is I don’t know - but I can tell you where we saw it and that was along Silverless Street, near St Mary’s church in Marlborough, Wiltshire.
I found it on Google Street view, copied and pasted the image above and you will notice that this row of terraced houses have a little recess on their front, just to the right/left of their front doors. The house with the “prison grill” and the house next door has a similar recess but no grill.
So the question is, was this what I thought it was or not? I would be intrigued to know what these houses used to be, if they weren’t just houses?
Always look at for the unusual is what I say, towns are full of intrigue.
ever heard of "tax on windows"? well, buildings were built (especially offices of sort) with normal windows. if whoever moved in, if not able to pay the window tax, a crew came along and filled the window with blocks/bricks. yours looks something like that.