A letter in the Basingstoke Gazette mentions who the street was named after and the building BCoT are renovating, which was originally built as a public house but never became one…..

http://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/letters/8948807.May_we_remember_him/

A building project enabling BCoT construction students to gain hands-on experience of a real job is taking shape near the college.

A few months ago BCoT purchased an empty property in neighbouring May Street, a stone’s throw from the rear of the college, and put into motion plans to restore the building to its former glory.

The Victorian semi-detached property in Brookvale was originally built as a pub but was never used as one. It had a number of uses and additions over the years and was recently used as a Caribbean food store. It had been empty for number of months before BCoT purchased it.

Students from the college’s construction department, supervised by their lecturers, will spend the next two years renovating the property. They will strip it back to basics and then transform it into a modern family home while retaining the building’s Victorian charm and character.

Whilst waiting for planning and other consents associated with working in a preservation area, work has already begun in stripping back over 100 years of accumulated decoration and DIY leading to some interesting discoveries. The two most surprising finds have been an aging aga behind a bricked up fireplace and a sash window within a wall, which had been plaster-boarded over for the addition of an extension.

Head of the construction department, Alan Dilly, commented; “It’s great to be able to give students across all of our building trade courses a real, live project to work on. Our staff and students are all really excited about restoring the house to its former glory whilst incorporating all modern conveniences. It’s also giving the students a bit of a building history lesson when they are working with things like the Victorian staircase, walls twice as thick as those in modern houses, original fireplaces and sash windows. It’s an experience they wouldn’t get on a modern building site.”

Progress will be documented throughout the build with photographs taken at regular intervals and key stages. Once completed, the house will be a three bedroom family home complete with garden and off-road parking.