Heritage: Moments in time – images of Winchester from 40 years ago

Queen Elizabeth II is on the throne, Mrs Thatcher is in Downing Street, the miners’ strike is at its most violent and Virgin Atlantic completes its inaugural flight. 

Two Tribes by Frankie Goes To Hollywood is No.1 and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is showing at the cinema.

I am first-year student at Peter Symonds College taking a photography module and one of our assignments is to take photographs around Winchester during a single day. The objective is rather vague, but it has something to do with a heritage project we are told. I am given a battered 35mm camera and a roll of black and white film. I reluctantly venture out on a Saturday afternoon. It is hot and humid and the city packed with shoppers, and I spend as little time there as possible.

Task completed, and the film precariously developed by me on the following Monday, the negatives have remained in a small box ever since. A few notes are scrawled on the tatty lid, including the date the photos were taken: 30 June 1984. After recently posting one of the photos in a Facebook group (Winchester Ancient & Modern), the Hampshire Chronicle contacted me to share some of the images with you and the story behind them. 

My favourite photo of this set shows the Abbey Gardens, which has not changed much in the intervening decades. Two couples sit on a bench looking over the grounds towards the Guildhall, echoing the line in the Simon & Garfunkel song "Old friends sat on their park bench like bookends...”

The clock on the Guildhall tower provides a precise time-stamp, something of a rarity before the advent of digital phones that automatically date and time every photo we take. If you look closely, you will see a group of young people sprawled on the ground, almost mirroring the older friends on the bench, and you see a solitary groundsman taking a break and smoking a pipe. It is a tranquil intermission on a bustling day and, for me at least, conveys something about the nature of friendship and the enduring beauty of this spot in the heart of the city.

The photo of the High Street is grainy because it is heavily cropped. When I developed the film I managed to let light invade, damaging one side of a negative strip, but you can see that the fashions, cars and shops are all markedly different compared to today. Online shopping and flexible working were years in the future, so if you wanted to buy something, you had to join the hordes in town on a Saturday.

Some people today might be surprised to learn that some parts of Winchester were dilapidated and tired in 1984. The entire country was emerging from the neglect of 1970s and early 1980s, and even a prosperous city like Winchester was not immune. The graffiti was taken in Cross Keys Passage, obviously referencing the remains of an amorous encounter, and I believe the derelict house front was taken in Staple Gardens, shortly before the street was redeveloped. It might have even been a squat. 

It wasn’t just humble buildings that were rundown. As you can see, the stones of the famous cathedral were weathered and polluted (they were cleaned about 20 years ago), producing a dark and mottled appearance. Yet inside the masonry remains exquisitely preserved. At the time, I was delighted with the shot of the bishop’s tomb because I had to fiddle with the exposure to achieve a specific depth of field; something that can be easily achieved with today’s photo editing software.

These photographs are not great by any standard; they were hurriedly snapped by a student who really didn’t want to be there. I just pointed the camera and pressed the shutter, trying to exhaust the roll of film as quickly as possible and get home before going out to the local pubs with friends in the evening. Yet, by simply recording a tiny pattern in the rich kaleidoscope of city life, the images prove interesting four decades later. Like an insect trapped in amber, each captures a moment in time and, if we look carefully enough, each has a story to tell.

By Antony M. Brown

Antony is a local author who has lived in or near Winchester all his life. His books include the Cold Case Jury series of true crime mysteries. He also is co-founder of wow-vinyl.com, a website that celebrates the Golden Years of the British Single (1977-85).