Photographs of Winchester 1977-2000 - TrustNews Sept 2005
At the end of 2004, David Marklew, the former City Engineer for Winchester City Council, deposited in Hampshire Record Office a large collection of photographs of the city which he had taken over the course of about 23 years. This forms a fascinating record for the student of the city's built landscape and it will certainly increase in significance as time passes, and as the numerous changes which we have all witnessed during these decades recede from memory.
These photographs are particularly unusual because many of them include features which many photographers actually choose to avoid capturing on film! They are, I would say, an engineer's view of Winchester's townscape and encompass numerous features which are not necessarily scenic but which have nevertheless preoccupied many people over a long period of time. They include subjects such as the city's changing street furniture, its one-way systems, its road markings, car parks and traffic problems, ail matters which have played a significant part in the physical development of the city and which are frequently mentioned in other documents but have not until now been depicted so fully on film.
Of particular note are the photographs of relatively new features in Winchester: the Park and Ride car park at Bar End; congestion on the former Winchester bypass and the construction of the M3 motorway; the paving of part of the High Street; and the building of the Chesil multi-storey car park. There are over one hundred photographs of the Brooks site, as it developed from archaeological dig to shopping centre between October 1988 and 1990, showing all the knock-on problems of a large construction site in the middle of the town, including muddy roads and streams and colossal cranes and diggers in our midst. The most recent photographs in the collection are those of the river in flood in November 2000 which illustrate the problems at the lower end of the town and include interiors of some premises. It is interesting that there are no photographs of the construction of Hampshire Record Office which took place during this period - but this has fortunately been fully documented on film by others!
The collection comprises 282 photographs and over 1600 slides. The catalogue is now available on-line at www.hants.gov.uk/record-office/catalog and the photographs have the reference W/C29/3/5-32. If anyone wishes to see them, they are welcome to call into Hampshire Record Office where they can be viewed in the searchroom. The Record Office is open Mondays to Fridays 9am to 7pm and on Saturdays 9am to 4pm. Further details may be found on-line at www.hants.govuk/record-office.