Gosford Street

There was a mix of businesses and homes on the street side. The courts were any part beyond the main front building. Sometimes the houses were a single block built together but often they were a mix of different developments, sometimes detached. The plots were originally gardens for the front property but as the need for property grew they started building along the garden. They were initially called yards and were often named after the business or owner at the front. Some point in the late 1800s they became courts with a number.

Thank you both for the information and detail - I'm hoping we can get all the photos and details we've found collated and to show Great Grandma what we've found and she will no doubt correct us if anything is wrong so I'll let you know!!

The building that was Gosford Meat Supplies is the one that became (temporarily!) Whitefriars Ale House -

Helen I'm just reviewing the Historic England archive and I'm sure there are some new additions - this is with some images of The Mermaid - I think it might be the passageway to the side numbered as 110 on the 1950 map -

I've got it as court 13, behind number 32, with the rear of the Blue Pig on the right. North side of the road.

Dean Nelson just posted this one on FB and thanks to Heathite's directories I've been able to locate as 62 Gosford St on the left - Maison Dawes Hairdressers and No.63 to the right - Jesse Franklin Ladieswear. 63 later became the Alex Cafe - opposite where National Tyres are today.

Nice one! And from Rob's Collection in 1929 they were building number 62.

Cheers Helen - as with many - the road looks so much narrower there compared to how it is now.

Great shot of The Peacock -

The Peacock still existed when I first started this project and I could see it on Google. I used it to to try and orientate buildings in photos, though I later discovered that it wasn't in exactly the same location as the earlier building. The next time I came to look, it had gone! Street view had it for a while if you took the right road and Bing had it for even longer. It became a race against time to pinpoint a few legacy buildings before they vanished.

Thank goodness there's still one final peek of the pub available on Google Street View from 2008 ! I hadn't realised the pub had moved, though - I'll have to update the pub website if you can help me with that, Helen.

Hi Rob, I phrased that wrong. A better way would be to say that it expanded to the east when it was rebuilt and to the south in modern times, so the modern footprint didn't fit the earliest maps. The wall with a doorway to the east (left when viewed from the street) was always a passage but the original building extended over it. Without stepping through the maps, it was very hard to understand the scale of the old buildings compared to the modern. So it was listed as number 79 but originally it was possibly number 80, with 79 being its neighbour, though numbering was a bit willy-nilly. A comparison. Look how small the original building was, compared to its replacement.