THE Conservative Club has been a feature of Romsey’s Market Place for well over a hundred years.

In the late 19th century there was a Liberal Club at the bottom of Bell Street, in a building that faced up the street and which hand once belonged to Winchester College. 

The land on which it stood is now open ground at the bottom of the steps down from the Duke’s Mill shops.

In the 1850s or 1860s the building had housed Edward Withers’ second-hand furniture business. A 78-year-old Edward Withers died in 1908 but whether the shop had been his or that of another member of the family is not apparent.

By 1875 there were two Withers in the furniture business, both cabinet makers. James was established in Middlebridge Street, possibly in this building, and Edward in the Market Place.

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It is not apparent when the premises housed the Liberal Club but it seems likely that it was fulfilling this role as late as 1914. If so, it probably folded in the First World War. There had been a Liberal Club in Latimer Street in the 1890s when F. Binning was the secretary and which presumably moved to Bell Street.

The Liberal Club is one of Romsey’s shadowy institutions. It is shown in a photograph preserved by the late Tom Drew and is mentioned in Kelly’s Trade Directory of 1898, but whatever mark it made on the town has long since been erased. It would have suffered from the fact that many Liberals were non-Conformists and tee-totallers and not therefore patrons of a licensed premises.

For some years Jonathan Burton and his wife were caretakers of the club at the Bell Street site. He had come to Romsey in 1886 and originally worked for the ironmonger, Messrs Short, in The Hundred.

Later he worked as a deliverer for another ironmonger, Messrs Ely and Sons for 27 years, so caretaking must have been an additional job.

He died in 1939 at the age of 83 and his obituary records that he was one of the oldest members of the Loyal Palmerston Lodge of Oddfellows. This is the Friendly Society that built a hall in Middlebridge Street in 1902, which building is now a private house.

There is a picture of Parfitt’s fish and chip shop from the 1960s which has since been demolished. It lay immediately to the south of the former Liberal Club which was so longer standing when this picture was taken.