We were intrigued to see that the White Hart went up for sale on Boxing Day, or at least part of it did, rather confusingly described as a house with five bedrooms and five bathrooms. Click the image below for details.
The properties for sale would appear to be the five single bedroom flats built into the top two floors of the building following a planning application in 2017. The flats were registered with 125 year leases four years ago when the owners, ‘Heritage Property Southern Limited’, seem to have changed their development priority from the ground floor commercial premises to the upper floor residential development.
Having paid just £155,000 for the whole property in October 2011, Havant Civic Society would like now to see the owner invest funds into repairing the external structure of this Grade II Listed Building before submitting a visionary application for, say, a high-quality town centre restaurant.
If any reminder is needed regarding the nature of work to be done on the exterior, here are a few recent photographs highlighting its unloved state.
Havant Civic Society had been influential as part of a local group which secured Grade II listing for the structure in 2014 when it first became clear that having been disposed of by the Ind Coope brewery group, there was a risk that this significant town centre building might be lost.
The plans for the White Hart were originally drawn by renowned local architect, Alfred Edwin Stallard and since the estate agent has yet to produce floor plans for the flats, we thought we’d help them out by reproducing the work of another well known local architect, still publicly available on the HBC planning portal.
Why should we care?
The map below shows the listed building within the vicinity of the White Hart (ringed in red). Click the image to open the details of the listing from the Historic England website.
A note about the architect
Alfred Edwin Stallard was a well known Havant architect, seen here on his 40th birthday with his wife Ellen and children, Reg and Kath, on January 5, 1901.
In addition to the White Hart, Alfred Stallard’s pen drew the two Victorian semi-detached houses at 23-25 East Street, a little more detail of which can be found here, the War Memorial at St Faith’s and the United Reformed Church at the corner of Elm Lane and North Street.
The White Hart, at number 1 East Street, is just one of many listed properties in the town centre, several of them providing the character and charm for which East Street is much loved by residents. If HBC still has a Conservation Officer within its currently depleted ranks, then perhaps they could start taking a little more active interest. (If not, we shall start campaigning to have one appointed!)
Havant Civic Society 
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