Dorset Buildings, Waterlooville - 20 January 2016

Hidden away in most of our towns and cities are the most delicious echoes of the past. Hidden, that is, unless you look up which is something I always advise the photographer to do. Waterlooville is a town in Hampshire which comes close to making Havant look vibrant and that is a sad indictment of what urban retail decay has done to both. Our streets are scarred by predictable and often unattractive shop fronts but just look up and you will often see the most tantalising clues to how the buildings in which they are placed once were.

It is difficult to find a reference on the internet to Dorset Buildings, occupied today by Finishing Touch carpet shop and W H Smith. The latter's address is officially 107 London Road but, with Finishing Touch occupying number 103, one can surmise that the newsagent fills the former number 105 also. As intimated above, one probably would not give a second glance to the view at street level but I just love the roofline.

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