Wrap Up Warm

No contest for my choice on Sweater Day.

This grey jumper is the ultimate in warm and cosy.

It was a fabulous find in my favourte charity shop, the local Barnardos where everything is £1.99.

I wore this when we had our weekend away in Bristol late last year and as it had kept me toasty as we explored that city I knew it would be perfect for out little urban walk today.

We live very close to an area of Southampton called Bitterne.

A while ago I had bought a booklet produced by a local history society detailing a self guided walk around Bitterne.

The walk itself is divided into 3 sections and today we did part 1.

The walk begins by The Red Lion pub.

A year ago, after undergoing refurbishment and a new extension, it was reopened by Wetherspoons.

A nearby underpass has a tiled red lion on the walls echoing the lion in the precinct.

Although the road was extremely quiet on a Sunday afternoon it is quite the opposite during the week as it's a main road into town.

The guide book told us that this was once a route used to herd sheep along on their way to market. On the corner of this road stands a shop and from it a watchmaker plied his trade. One day his young son managed to get out of the gate and wandered onto this stretch of road. Suddenly 4 horsemen galloped towards him and being scared and not knowing what to do to get himself safely out of the way he began to cry. One of the men dismounted, scooped him up and returned him back home to his father.
Apparently this gentlemen was none other than Baden-Powell who had been riding from the Southampton Remount Depot towards Netley Hospital to visit soldiers who had been injured in the Boer War. 

Near the corner of one road stood a solitary tree which we would have walked past without a second glance had the guide book not drawn our attention to it.
4 foot from the ground a metal hook is fixed into the trunk, positioned there in the 1920s, so a gentleman named Alfred Petty could hoist himself on to and off of his horse. He needed this assistance as he had lost a leg. 

I can't help but wonder who on earth thought it was a good idea to put in white UPVC windows on this building which had originally been built as a Baptist Chapel but has also been used as an Anglican chapel, council chamber and library.
With it's dull brown exterior and the stark white of the windows it looks more than a little plain and could really benefit from a bit of tlc.

One house I did fall in love with was this cottage. 
With a 'Sold' sign in the front garden I hope it's going to have some new residents who will love it and create a happy home insides it's walls.

This row of houses are just a section from a cluster of identical homes built in 1970.
They stand on the site formerly occupied by a grand pile named Anglesey House which was home to Mr Gerald Mills. He was one half of the romantic publisher's Mills & Boon's.

There were once a fair few pubs in this area and now just two still survive.
We discovered The Humble Plumb about halfway through our walk and as the sun has disappeared and we were feeling the cold it did looked very inviting but we decided to keep going, although I think a future visit is needed.
The other pub is The Fox and Hounds. Built in the 1870s it was originally named The Cooper's Arms but changed to it's present name a decade later to honour a local hunt which met there.

G had never walked any of these streets and it has been years since I had visited some of them too.
It was fascinating walking around somewhere so local to where we live and finding out about social history so close to home.