St Mary Street

South End

For the purposes of this website, we have split St Mary Street into two sections.  The Top or South End covers the length of the street from the junction with Horseshoe Lane up to its junction with Chapel Street.

The history of this end of St Mary Street is more difficult than that of many other areas of the Town.  Almost all the houses have now gone. 

We only have one photograph that shows us the houses on the East side of the street and this is the one above.  On this side, there was a continuous row of houses from Horseshoe Lane to Chapel Street. When house numbering was introduced in the early 1950's these houses were numbered 25 through to 61.  In the photo shown above Joe Conway's shop on the far left was number 25, the blue house was 25A, and then it continued with number 27 etc.  We know that some of the houses have been split, combined or rebuilt at various times and this makes it difficult to be sure about where people in the old days lived.  We have done our best using the few documents that exist to determine who owned certain properties and who lived there at various times.

On the West side, there was just a group of four houses near the bottom of this end of the street.  We have been lucky enough to find not only photos of the houses but also documents that showed who owned and occupied these houses.  These houses were given the numbers 8, 10, 12 & 14 St Mary Street when house numbering was introduced.   At one time there was a small group of houses, cottages and shops near the top of the street at the back of the Exchange pub.  We have quite a few  documents about these houses but in the absence of any photo or plan we are not attempting to write any history of them at this time.    

Click on the thumbnail below to see a plan of this end of the street in 1960 showing house numbers.