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Letter to the Editor - Chris Webb - TrustNews August 09

Dear Sir,

What can one do?

I have long felt there are many small things an individual can do to enhance our City. I have, over the years, not only researched the history of my house, but have made surprising discoveries, despite Royal Mail "jobs worth's" suppressing the 1840 original name.

Recent activities have included Hockley Viaduct now, hopefully, destined to have a long term use as a bike route in this carbon neutral climate. Sadly, as many of you know, the Black Swan, at the corner of the High Street and Southgate Street, has been headless for some 4 years now. The present 1930 building was the site of the Black Swan hotel, famous as the meeting place of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and Miss Hunter in the novel "Copper Beeches". Now, one would think this site would be marked with a plaque and the swan's head quickly restored. What a tourism "eye stopper" for visitors, to say nothing of the benefit to the shop on the corner.

Further along Southgate Street, outside one of the City's most prestigious hotels, was a sign, no longer there, proclaiming the site of Cromwell's battery, when Southgate Street was the siege line of The Castle. There is the much later connection in 1944, when Field Marshal Montgomery took a brief break from North West Europe to meet his son (the present Viscount, then at the College), to have lunch with him. Even Sir Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary in Churchill's wartime government, dined there. It is, I have found, a war of attrition, but I never give up hope.

At the moment, with the owners of Hampshire Workspace and Phil Yates, I am trying to get 39 Southgate Street marked as the first premises of Peter Symonds' school in 1897, (the book on Peter Symonds' erroneously states the buildings were destroyed — they are all alive, well and Grade II listed).

How many know the Raymond Blanc Brasserie, in Jewry Street, was a British restaurant during World War II and that a picture in oils of the interior by Leonard Daniels (1909 — 1998) is in Southampton Art Gallery, (originally purchased by the Winchester School of Art in 1942 - how did Southampton acquire it and decline to let us have it on loan, or later to purchase it?). I am pleased to say that a reproduction of Leonard Daniel's picture is now in the Brasserie, providing an interesting link with food rationing and today's cuisine. There are many "mini projects" Trust members can record, for example street furniture, with local names like Edwin Carter Moreton and City Foundry, are still with us, but for how much longer?

As my friend from Sierra Leone said "you have so much history and history makes a nation".

Yours

Chris Webb, Chernocke Place