Victoria Avenue
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Heritage
Trail Location 13 - Victoria Avenue (work in progress) |
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Photo 1 – Victoria Avenue -pre 1898 (postcard in Webmaster's collection)
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In 1886 a group Of investors formed a Syndicate to develop the Spa Baths and Victoria Hotel. They commissioned London architect, Richard Adolphus Came, to take charge of the development and to design the village. He laid out plans on the lines of a garden city, in the then fashionable German Spa rustic style, with a wide and straight, main road called 'The Broadway', a shopping mall and tree lined roads and avenues. He stipulated that there were to be no thoroughfares named “streets.”
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Photo 2 – This photograph was taken in 2009 from almost the same position as Photo 1. Trees and hedges now restrict the view of the houses from the original position. Note the decorative clay tiles on 'Davenport'. |
One of the first of these was Victoria Avenue, named after the Queen who was still the well respected monarch of this country. |
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| Photo 3 – Stanhope House |
Some of the early properties were designed as guest houses. The guest would inhabit the best rooms at the front and the owners would live at the back. The early ones, built between 1884 and 1890, have facades of decorative clay tiles. These first houses in Victoria Avenue were designed by Adolphus Came himself. |
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Photo 4 – 'Sylvanhay' |
Some of the large villas were designed with the front door at the side so that people residing there could step straight from their porch into the carriage on the drive of the property.
By 1890 there were 100 dwellings in the Spa, of which 25 were boarding houses. Some of the properties in Victoria Avenue were built specifically for visitors, such as “Sylvanhay” which is still so called and which in those early days was run by Miss Meshullemeth Harding. |
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Photo 5 – 'Verwood' |
It has been observed that money conscious builders existed in those, as well as our times, as bricks used for the front elevation of the houses are often of a superior quality to those on the side or rear.
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Photo 6 – 'Wildersdale' . Note drive with main entrance on side of property. |
Modern bungalows in Victoria Avenue, near Tattershall Road, were built on land which previously belonged to the Royal Hotel. These grounds were detached from the main Royal Hotel grounds by the railway line which ran behind the Mall Hotel. They were accessed by a foot bridge near the Tattershall Road railway crossing. They included the present Clarence Road and contained landscaped gardens and tennis courts and a bandstand on the Victoria Avenue side of the land.) |
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The Heritage Trail |
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Click
on the numbers on the map to visit the next point on the Woodhall Spa Heritage
Trail. |
Select here for location 20 - Kirkstead
Select here for location 21 - The Broadway
The trail
can be started at any location, but we suggest you also visit the
Cottage Museum to view the photographs taken by John Wield during
the heyday of the Spa and items associated with this
unique Victorian Spa town.
The Trail is just one of several projects in the hands of the Woodhall Spa Parish Council sponsored Heritage Committee. Click here if you are interested in the committee or their projects.
How
well do you know Woodhall Spa?
See
if you can identify the location of these architectural
features and items of street furniture! Or find the Letterbox
Find out more abouit the Woodhall Spa Conservation
Area |
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last updated 29 Dec 11 |
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