The Acrimonious Origin of North Walls Park in Winchester hampshirechronicle.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hampshirechronicle.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“The end result is not what was in mind.”
In 2015, those words served as the refrain to a menacing yet inexplicably catchy piece of electronic pop by an artist called East India Youth. Of course, William Doyle couldn’t have expected this when he wrote them, but six years, one abandoned alias and a failed hard drive later, they’ve taken on an entirely new significance: they now fit equally well as the modus operandi of his newest album,
Great Spans of Muddy Time.
I first became aware of Doyle’s music after the release of his first full album under his own name, 2019’s
YOU may pass them on a Covid walk without realising what they are. They look like perfectly normal houses – even fine ones – but they were built with unconventional materials. These are the numerous houses made of chalk. There are many examples in Hampshire, especially in and around the Test Valley and between Andover and the Salisbury Plain. They include Rookwood School in Andover, which was built as a fine gentleman’s residence and Thimble Hall, Quarley, originally a pair of cottages. A fine example once stood where the Royal Hampshire County Hospital was extended in the 1980s. Many existing houses in the Orams Arbour and St Cross areas of Winchester are also made of chalk, excavated from local railway cuttings. And yet from the outside you would never know it.