Returning from Moot Lane and turning left into the High Street, most of the buildings you can see are listed.
On the opposite side of the junction, the house at the corner of the High Street with Barford Lane was formerly used as a registry office and was the last property in the village that remained in the ownership of Winchester College.
The Wooden Spoon public house was formerly known as The New Inn and briefly,The Downton Inn. Other buildings of particular interest on this side of the street include number 19 [Harebell Cottage), formerly occupied by Walter Durdle, a shoemaker who was also a church sexton and the last engineer at the old Downton Fire Brigade; number 15 (The Warren) , where the Heritage Trail plaque is located - formerly used as a Vicarage and said to have once had an underground passage to the church; and number 13, formerly known as Inverness and once occupied by John Reeves, a licensed maltster whose sign can still be seen on the front wall. (The Warren was also the home of Professor Wrightson - the great grand-father of Lord Julian Fellowes, the creator of the Downton Abbey TV series - he named the program after this Downton, and "Abbey" after Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire).
Of interest passing along the southern side of the High Street are numbers 32/34 - formerly Arthur Chipperfield's grocers shop (which lives on in the modern house name) and the old Downton Post Office (formerly Eastman's Wicker Repository).
The modern day Methodist chapel was built in 1896. After the closure of the New Wesleyan Reformed Chapel (see next page) and on amalgamation with local Primitive Methodists in 1932, the Wesleyan Methodist chapel became the United Free Methodist church. and has recently been sold and to be converted into housing.
Former members of the congregation of the Wesleyan Chapel on Lode Hill were apparently meeting in two cottages on this site from l884. The cottages were owned by the headmaster of the British School and on his death he left them to the Wesleyan Methodists.
Number 18 (Ravenswood) is another building that was once partly used as a grocer‘s Shop. In 2007 the adjacent building, then occupied by the Mace Downton Village Stores, was gutted by a fire, footage of which subsequently appeared on YouTube. The premises had previously been operated by Woodford & C0. International Stores, Bailey and son, and Spar.
Number 14 was bequeathed to St Laurence's Church in 1914. by Elizabeth Baily Hooper, to be used as ‘a residence for a female Lay Reader of the Church of England for the benefit of Downton'. It had been named The Laurels but following the bequest was renamed Church House. It remained in the ownership of the church until i955. During World War One the house was used to accommodate the Deflours, a family of Belgian refugees.
Avon House and the adjoining fish and chip shop were once a hardware shop operated by Oswald Coppack and Sons and then Mr Lamont. The modern day Tannery House was briefly used as an alternative health centre in the early 21st century. The original Tannery House was located on the opposite side of the road, where the old Tannery building itself now stands.
As its name suggests, Chapel Cottage was constructed on the site of a now demolished chapel. A group broke away from the Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Lode Hill in 1849 and opened their own New Wesleyan Reformed Chapel here between 1851 and 1854. The chapel was still open in l900 but appears to have closed a few years later.
The chapel building was later used as a youth club, operated by local teachers Mr and Mrs Holgate and known as ‘The Be Bop'. The legendary Johnny Holgate and The Woodworms played here, as did The Riverside Skiffle Group who later went electric and became The Aces. These bands then provided members for the most celebrated band in the Downton area - The Satellites.
