by Alan H J Green
I have made another interesting find on eBay, this time a sepia postcard which was described by the vendor as being of 18 North Street Chichester, a tobacconist’s shop. I did not recognise the building, but a quick check of my 1933 Kelly’s confirmed that it was what it claimed to be, so I bought it. A site visit soon revealed why I had not recognised it ; it had seemingly been rebuilt and now carries a date of 1948.
Now I had previously come across a Reginald Stringer who ran a Chapel Street tent-making business when researching my book 900 years of Chichester’s Markets and so wondered whether it could be the same man. This demanded more research which revealed that it was indeed the same man, and one who had made a colourful contribution to Chichester’s commercial history, as well as bringing about the current appearance of 18 North Street.
18 North Street, Chichester
The present 18 North Street (H Samuel) as has been said, apparently dates from 1948, as witnessed by a date plaque (about which more later) but the post card shews the building as it was prior to that.
The depicted three-storey, three-bay building has a brick front, the upper storeys being stuccoed and painted. The centre bay has blind windows. A parapet hides the tiled roof and the lead rainwater head bears the initials ‘E P ‘and the date 1748. It is quite likely that this is an earlier timber-framed building which had been given a Georgian brick front in 1748 rather than being completely rebuilt at the time.
The ground floor has a 20C double shop front and above the entrance is a sign bearing the legend “Late T S Adcock.” Reginald Stringer is listed at this address in 1930s directories trading as a tobacconist. However there was much more to Mr Stringer’s business affairs than the shop; the premises extended back to Chapel Street where he carried on the aforementioned trade of tent and marquee maker and hirer.
T S Adcock – the precursor
The name displayed above the entrance to 18 North Street commemorates Thomas Schwartz Adcock, who is principally remembered for the eponymous garage business he acquired in 1908, initially sited at the Corn Exchange and moving later to the far end of East Street. However his first business was as a printer and stationer. He had moved to Chichester from Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire sometime between 1878 and 1880 and set up his business at 18 North Street where he lived above the shop.
In 1883 he printed a small guidebook by J C Simmonds entitled Chichester and Round About It in which he placed the advertisement given in Fig 2 above, and he also printed and published a booklet of ten local photographs simply titled Chichester .It is undated but some of the photographs are marked ‘F.F .& Co’ for Francis Frith, and their negative numbers point to a date of 1898.
In addition to running his own two businesses he became heavily involved with the Chichester Corn Exchange Company being appointed a director in 1911 and elected chairman in 1921, a post he held until he died. As such he was quite a prominent character in the city, albeit he never became a councillor.
He was still living ‘over the shop’ with his wife Mary at the 1921 census where he is recorded as having a housekeeper of the name Mary Ellen Stringer who was his niece.
Thomas Adcock died without issue in 1925, the year after he lost his wife, following which the North Street business passed to his great nephew Reginald Skinner. The garage business was bought by C D Herniman who perpetuated the Adcock name and it continued in East Street until the mid-1970s.
Reginald Skinner
Reginald Skinner was born in Shere, Surrey in 1901, the only son of John and the aforesaid Mary Ellen Skinner, and in 1928 he acquired 18 North Street and the Chapel Street premises to the rear. This we know from his informing the inquiry into the planning application to rebuild his bombed-out Chapel Street premises that he had inherited the premises that year and only ran the tobacconist’s shop as a side line to his tent making business. Interestingly, in the 1929 Kelly’s he is trading as T S Adcock (R Stringer Proprietor ) but by 1931 this had been changed to his own name, he seemingly no longer needing to trade on the goodwill established by his late great uncle.
In November 1948 he married Miss Violet E Burt at St Peter the Great and the florid newspaper report described him as being ‘a well-known businessman … and the only son of Mrs M Stringer of 18 North Street’. Mother was obviously still living above the shop. It was also in 1948 that Stringer obtained planning permission to rebuild the front of No 18 ‘from the first floor upwards’ which strongly suggests that this was indeed a timber-framed building and it was now parting company with its later Georgian front. This was a not uncommon phenomenon in Chichester in the 20C as increasingly heavy vehicles subjected ancient buildings to unaccustomed jolting. He maintained a link with the past though by reusing the 18C lead rainwater head seen in Fig 1, so the building now carries two dates exactly 200 years apart – 1748 and 1948.
Mr Stringer’s Shop
Although the 1930s directory listings for the shop consistently describe it as a tobacconists, it was obviously much more than that. The advert given in Fig 4, taken from a front page of the Chichester Observer, demonstrates that Stringer’s stock-in-trade included such things as handbags, wallets, purses and fancy clocks. In other words he dealt in what was termed Fancy Goods. Indeed, a study of the contents of the window reveal it to be crammed with a wide variety of merchandise including a large Imari plate.
There is, though, an advert for Player’s cigarettes in the left hand window to uphold the tobacconist claim. The directories also list Thomas Triggs as trading as a printer from no 18: he had presumably had taken on Adcock’s presses and goodwill. It may well be he who printed the postcard of the shop.
Mr Stringer’s Tents
As has been intimated, Reginald Stringer established a tent-making business operating from the end-of-garden buildings which faced onto Chapel Street, and numbered 25 in that thoroughfare. From here he hired out marquees for functions for which he had contracts with many august agricultural organisations as well as the Goodwood Estate.
Unfortunately, on 10 February 1943 at 1530hrs, a single German plane dropped four high-explosive bombs across the city one of which flattened Stringer’s tent-making buildings, but 18 North Street was relatively unscathed. He was granted refuge by the Corporation in the Market House to carry on his tent business until he could rebuild his premises. Obtaining planning permission for this proved a long and painful process and when he failed to pay his Market House rent his goods were seized by the County Sheriff and he was evicted in July 1953, and that seems to have been the end of Mr Stringer’s businesses. His rebuilding never went ahead.
Back in North Street
There was no directory entry for the shop in 1950 and Mrs Stringer is not listed as living over the top either, but Reginald had moved across the road to No 5 North House with his new wife. By 1954 the shop had been taken on by Meakers Ltd, men’s and boys’ outfitters, who had managed to gain an appointment to supply uniforms to Chichester High School for Boys as rivals to Bishop’s in East Street , they who had long held the Chichester monopoly for the supply of the famous green blazers. Sadly both Meakers and Bishops, like Chichester High School for Boys, are no more. Sic Transit.
Fig 5. No 18 North Street in 2024, occupied by the jewellery chain H Samuel. Between the second-floor windows can be seen the plaque bearing the date 1948 – the year that Reginald Stringer rebuilt the front wall to the first and second floors and inserted dormers into the attic. The lead rainwater head is the one seen in Fig 1 having been incorporated into the new work and giving the building two dates exactly two hundred years apart! (Author).
As with so many commercial properties in Chichester’s main streets these days it no longer displays a street number making location of addresses problematic.
Envoi
This postcard must be a very rare survivor and its acquisition opened a window onto an interesting element of Chichester’s commercial history and revealed an unexpected link between Reginald Stringer and Thomas Adcock.
Next time you pass H Samuel in North Street look up: the 1948 plaque is very plain to see, but only if the sun is in the right direction can make out ‘E.P. 1748’ on the rainwater head. Now who was this E.P. I hear you ask? Well, I have to admit that I know not. The property deeds are not at WSRO and whilst the St Olave parish records at the time list family names of Peat, Palmer, Philpot, Pelham and Pundlebury, frustratingly none of them provide the ‘E’ component !
A longer, fully referenced, version of this piece, to include Mr Stringer’s tent making business and his long battle with the Corporation to rebuild his war-torn premises, will appear in the 2024 issue of West Sussex History – the journal of West Sussex Archive Society