Andover history: When plans were put forward for statue

Son of grocer and house agent John Sherwood, whose shop was in Sandgate Road, Henry’s father was on the council there and mayor four times.

The shop must have been a reasonably large one as it occupied two adjacent buildings and provided employment for 15 men and boys. Henry was well-educated, going to the Anglo-French College in Finchley and later to Paris. Presumably, he also spent time learning the grocery trade in his father’s shop but in 1883 he came to live in Andover.

The reason to do so was Henry Dowling who already had a grocery business here but was a generation older. Evidence suggests that the families already knew each other as when the elder Sherwood died, his obituary stated that he and Dowling were good friends. Dowling was mayor of Andover in 1872 and so moved in the same type of civic and business circles as Henry Sherwood’s father. Henry was later to marry Dowling’s daughter Adeline, permanently linking the two families together.

Dowling and Sherwood was at 15 Bridge Street, a retail shop set into the ground floor of a much larger building that had replaced the Bush Inn. Dowling had bought the old inn around the year 1850. By that time the status of such inns had been eclipsed by the railways and many of the regular coaches had ceased to run. Even though Andover’s Junction station had not opened as a line from London until 1854, and the Town Station in 1865, many of the towns east of Andover would already have had rail links, thus wrecking the practised coaching routes from London to Plymouth or Exeter.

At the end of 1850, just two days from Christmas, auctioneer Frederick Ellen announced the sale of the contents of the Bush Inn. It included 15 feather beds, 50 wooden casks, a beer engine and all the other requisites of the substantial hostelry. The sale also included a lead model of a white hart and I wonder if it is this that now stands on the roof of the hotel on the opposite side of the street. The present White Hart hotel had been so-named well before 1850 but does anybody know when the lead model was placed there? Inns frequently changed their names but The Bush was never called the White Hart – indeed, before 1780 it was quaintly named The Black Boy and so the white hart there is a mystery.

With all the contents sold off, Henry Dowling pulled it down and built anew. It was a spacious site and the rooms above provided accommodation for the Dowling family. He may have hoped his son Frank would in due course join him in partnership but Frank entered the church, and in 1878 went out to South Africa. He was still there five years later when he entered the priesthood and put in charge of the church at Heidelberg there.

With his only son evidently not going into the grocery trade, Henry decided to look for a partner in business and no doubt Henry Sherwood came to Andover for that specific reason. When Henry married Adeline Dowling in 1887, the business was already called Dowling and Sherwood and seems to have been so since 1883. Taking a back seat, Henry Dowling and his remaining family moved out of the premises above the shop to a new house called Westfield, part of the area known then as Andover New Town. Around the same time his daughter and son-in-law moved in to Bridge Street. They were to have three sons and two daughters there before moving to a new house, Verulam, in The Avenue.

Henry Sherwood’s other interests included cricket, being hon secretary to the local club and also its captain. He served as captain of the volunteer Andover Fire Brigade but tendered his resignation because he objected to ‘outsiders’ criticising the brigade’s performance.

This refers to the episode in March 1894 when a serious fire at Beale’s building yard in Adelaide Road had destroyed both the works and the public swimming baths that Beale had erected some years before. The baths were quickly rebuilt and stood until 1976. Evidently an energetic character, Henry then determined to join the borough council and was elected unopposed in December 1894. Less than a year later, he was made mayor.

But maybe there were aspects of his character that were capable of criticism. During his first mayoralty of 1895-96, a mysterious handbill circulated around the town, proposing a statue to mayor Sherwood in marble or bronze, which would be erected in the market place. Donations were invited in order to raise the sum of £1,000. The supposed ‘committee’ comprised George Piper of Chantry Street (president), Emanuel Ball of New Street (treasurer) and secretary Frederick Wild of Mudtown (Eastfield Road). The treasurer had a shop in New Street and any articles donated to the cause could be forwarded to him and sold.

The Advertiser seems to have ignored this completely, it obviously being a satirical jibe, aimed at lampooning the mayor, perhaps suggesting that His Worship thought himself rather too important.

Whether it was taken seriously is unknown but in an age when everybody in Andover knew everybody else, it would have been clear to most, that the characters involved were names not entirely unknown to the police.

I could find only two references to it; these were in a little-known London newspaper called The Morning Leader which recounts the details of the handbill on 30 September 1896 and then follows it up on 4 November to say that the fund is ‘romping along merrily’ and there was to be a ceremony of some sorts on 5 November, which of course was Bonfire Night.

It goes on to say that in order not to bother Mr Sherwood with sittings for his statue, it was proposed to copy one of the statues of Apollo ‘as there is practically no difference between the two’. One hundred and thirty years later, the key to the story eludes us but needless to say the statue was never erected.

Sherwood was mayor again in 1901-2 and oversaw the coronation celebrations for King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.

During his time in Andover he was actively involved in the Freemasons, the Oddfellows, the Andover Lighting and Power Company, the Andover Soup and Coal Fund, the Dental Dispensary and the local horticultural society. But from 1912 onwards he suffered from ill-health and he died at the young age of 57 in June 1917. His wife Adeline survived him for many years but she tragically died in a fire there in December 1933, started by spitting coals from a fire in the sitting room.

The couple’s eldest son, Frank H Sherwood, ran the shop from around 1912 and continued it as Dowling and Sherwood until around 1956. He had still retained the old liquor licence first granted by Charles I in 1628 to the old inn premises, then long gone. After Frank Sherwood’s death in 1964, Henry Dowling’s building was demolished and a row of shops built in its place. As ever, its 1960s vintage bears poor comparison with what was there before.

If you are interested in local history, why not join Andover History and Archaeology Society? Details can be found at andoverlocalhistoryarchaeology.uk