These photos will bring back memories for many readers of my page in this newspaper.

They show Wharf Terrace at the bottom of Mill Street, Wantage, which was demolished in 1972.

These houses fronted onto the the former wharf basin of the Wantage arm of the Wilts and Berks Canal, with a junction between Wantage and Grove.

To locate where they were today, go to the bottom of Mill Street and stand on the grassy area on the opposite side of the road to Wessex Mill, and you are standing where they were, backing onto the Mill Stream.

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Walking across the road from the mill before you got to the cottages was the Jolly Waterman pub. Edward Quincy was the publican here from 1898-1906.

The Quincey(s) later ran a cooked meat shop facing the mill. Here you could also buy lard, homemade faggots and rice pudding all cold.

Mr Quincy kept pigs on an allotment between Wharf Terrace and the tramway goods yard which sent out farmers' produce to Wantage Road railway station and received coal.

Wharf Terrace itself was built around 1810 when the canal opened. They outlasted the canal, which closed officially in 1914, and the wharf from which the Hiskins family ran up to 14 boats until 1900.

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The wharf was then filled in and eventually became Smiths Yard where Ben Smith ran a scrap merchants for many years.

The house facing the camera in the photo dating from 1970 was built by him.

What were the Wharf Terrace cottages like?

Well, the terrace consisted of 15 homes numbered running away from the mill: numbers one and two and five to 15 were on the roadside, with front doors opening onto the pavement, but nos three and four were set back close to the Letcombe Brook.

There was a passageway between nos 11-12 which gave rear access to nine-to-15.

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Another passage-way between numbers two and five served the back entrance to nos one, two and five-to-eight, as well as leading to the front of houses three and four and to the yard at the back of Goddard's.

Goddard’s was a double-fronted shop in Mill Street next to the brook. Many people will remember its later guise as ‘The Happy Thought’ or Reeve’s fish and chip shop.

According to the 1939 Register on FindMyPast, the surnames of the families living in Wharf Terrace in 1939 were No one Bull, No two Godwin, No three Farmer, No four Ferris, No five Jackson, No six Blunsden, No seven Barnard, No eight Appleton, No nine Green, No 10 Pierpoint, No 11 Farmer, No 12 Norris, No 13 Bennett, No 14 Godwin, No 15 Fleetwood.

Unfortunately I do not know the name of the dog!