Mrs Harcourt Roe

Ryde, Shaw's Tourist's Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight, 1873

"Mrs Harcourt Roe" is another forgotten novelist with an Isle of Wight connection. She's described in an 1893 Isle of Wight Observer review of her novel A Man of Mystery as "a lady, well-known in the Island”, and she lived at Ryde in the 1890s. I just researched a bit (well, more than a bit) on her life and works.

Locked in the bastion

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I had a short wander around Gosport town centre on Tuesday, including a visit to the Number 1 Bastion (also called, locally, Trinity Bastion or Vicar's Bank), part of Gosport's fortifications remaining from the days when the town and its associated military installations served a major role in the infrastructure of Portsmouth Harbour as a naval base.

A cryptic postcard unlocked

I had a minor Bletchley Park moment yesterday. John McConnell uploaded this postcard image (reproduced here by kind permission) to the Gosport Area Facebook group.

The making of Gosport Park

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I'm always fascinated by the landscape stories that it's possible to unearth using readily available sources. Yesterday a question was raised in the Gosport Memories group in Facebook about the origin of "The Dell", a recessed and banked oval of land in Gosport Park, Gosport, Hampshire (see Bing Maps).

With this kind of thing, it's always worth checking the excellent Old Maps map archive site, which readily finds that The Dell and the Park itself existed in 1898 ...

Gosport Park, 1898 OS map. Historic map data is (© and database right
Crown copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved
2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit
use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.

... but didn't in 1881, when the area was just a tract of common land called Ewer Common, on a peninsula between two creeks, Stoke Lake to the south, and Workhouse Lake to the north.

Ewer Common, 1867-1881 OS map. Historic map data is (© and database right
Crown copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved
2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit
use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.

This Martin Snape lithograph (found at www.richardmartingallery.co.uk) gives a good idea of what the land was like: heath and very low-grade pasture.

A look in the British Library 19th Century Newspapers archive finds that the land was transformed in the late 1880s, the driver behind the project being Colonel Charles Mumby. See Charles Mumby & Co., Gosport and Portsmouth: Memories Evoked by the Isle of Wight Steam Railway for a good biographical summary. (He wasn't a 'real' colonel, by the way - this was the kind of era when the local bigwig automatically got parachuted into some medium-high rank in the regional volunteer battalion - roughly equivalent to the modern Territorial Army). An all-round Victorian entrepreneur who'd become rich chiefly from mineral water manufacturing in Gosport, he'd risen in the town hierarchy to become chairman of the Local Board (precursor to borough council), and one of his projects was the proposal in 1886 to develop Ewer Common as a public park.

The Chairman said that while at Ewer Common some time ago he thought that this large tract of land which measured nearly 30 acres, would form a very desirable place of public recreation. While paying a subsequent visit to London, he saw the Chief Clerk to the Secretary of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. who were the Lords of the Manor at Alverstoke, and learned from him that no revenue was acquired from the land. He then wrote a letter to the Commissioners stating that the Common was merely used as a squatting place for gypsies and for digging gravel for the repair of roads, and that to his knowledge no common rights had been exercised for many years and he therefore asked whether the Commissioners would be willing to hand over the land for a public recreation ground. A favourable reply had been received, and he now moved that the question be referred to the Roads and Works Committee, for them to negotiate with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners with a view to acquiring Ewer Common.
-  The Hampshire Telegraph, February 13, 1886

It seems fairly high-handed of Mumby to present the plan at such an advanced stage, and there were objections - particularly from a Mr Treacher, who argued that this, like a previous deal to acquire land for building Thorngate Hall, amounted to misrepresentation and fraud. (I assume his implication was that Mumby was exaggerating the worthlessness of the land in order to get the owners to relinquish it). However, the resolution was passed. Treacher's objections continued over the next few years - chiefly about the general expense and the legality of the funding process:

Mr JF Treacher said that if he went according to his belief, he would oppose the motion [to borrow money to fence the park under construction] tooth and nail, but as the ground was commenced, he would remain neutral. He could hardly say that they had carried out this work in a strictly legal manner, as they had been drawing funds from the general district rate, for which no resolution had been passed. The total sum spent on Ewer Common would have been sufficient to build an Infection Diseases Hospital. Besides the Common was not in a central position, and would only be of use to a portion of the parish.
- Hampshire Telegraph, May 16, 1891

The Park was  completed in 1891, at a total cost of some £3000, and was opened on June 17th 1891.

OPENING OF THE GOSPORT PARK
Wednesday was a red letter day in the history of Gosport. In magnificent weather the new Park at Alverstoke was formally opened to the public. … A piece of land that was useless, except as a camping-ground for gypsies, is now transformed into a well laid-out recreation ground, with a capital cycle track and running path. The track itself, which is about three laps to the mile, is egg-shaped, the curves making easy sweeps. An unsightly gravel pit has been turfed, and will make excellent courts for tennis, the sloping sides sheltering the players, and effectually keeping the balls from straying too far. A spacious carriage-drive runs round the whole ground, and altogether the Gosport Park is an ornament and a credit to the parish.
- Hampshire Telegraph,  June 20, 1891

The Dell, although not named as such in the account of the opening, is clearly the site of this egg-shaped track.

The Ewer Common peninsula has other historical interest as the site of the former Alverstoke House of Industry, one of the first radially-designed workhouses (hence the adjacent creek being called Workhouse Lake). You can see a detailed ground plan on Old Maps, which has a 1:500 town plan:

Alverstoke House of Industry, 1875-1880 town plan.
Historic map data is (© and database right Crown copyright and Landmark
Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved 2009).
Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit
use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.

Closed after WW2, the workhouse site was used as an industrial unit until its demolition in 1989, and all that remains is its northern gateway, converted into a house. See The Workhouse / Alverstoke for further details and pictures. There's a slight Isle of Wight connection I didn't know about: Valentine Gray, the 'Little Sweep' who's commemorated in Church Litten park, Newport, was a former inmate.

- Ray (with thanks to Christopher Pope and Gary Baltao)

"Old Jervie"

John Ptak's blog Ptak Science Books category - "History of Blank, Missing and Empty Things" - is proving surprisingly applicable. A post by Dave Burnes in the Gosport Memories Facebook group reminded me of the displays my family took me to at HMS St Vincent, the RN training establishment at Gosport - decommissioned in 1969, and now a sixth-form college. One of the highlights of the year was the annual fireworks display on the parade ground - except that I remember being terrified by the huge figure looming out of the smoke.

This was the figurehead "Old Jervie" (or "Old Jarvie" in some sources): the effigy of John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent. The image at right comes from Rob Jerrard's maritime book reviews here. There are better images in the galleries at the HMS St Vincent Association site; in 1946 (see here) he presided over the "Ganges Gym", .in later years, he overlooked the parade ground (see here).

Apart from the facade, the historic buildings of HMS St Vincent have been demolished, and Old Jervie is no longer on the site. I'm pleased to see, however, that he's still extant, and has been moved to the nearby shore establishment HMS Collingwood. See John Oram's Flickr photo HMSCOD_011 - 4 June 2011 ('Old Jervie' - Admiral John Jervis. HMS Collingwood Open Day, Fareham).

- Ray

Crofton House, Titchfield

View Larger Map - the site of Crofton House

John Ptak's blog Ptak Science Books has an interesting category History of Blank, Missing and Empty Things, and this applies very well to the site of Crofton House, a now-demolished mansion near Titchfield, Hampshire.

I remember Crofton House; around 1970, it still existed - a run-down and abandoned 'haunted house' down a lane off the Titchfield Road a bit north-west of Stubbington - and despite signs of occupation in an adjacent wing, I used to sneak in with friends to explore it. It was undoubtedly dangerous; the big curving stairs at the back of the entrance hall were held together by little more than the carpet; the floorboards were rotten; there were sharp laths sticking out of the walls; and so on. There were also grounds, with a half-collapsed conservatory, an area packed solid with overgrown rusting cars and lorries, sheds containing crates of machine parts (apparently abandoned), and lots of climbable trees overlooking the fields. After several visits, I recall being chased out with threats of calling the police; bright red KEEP OUT! signs appeared on the lane, and ultimately a fence. I forgot the place, and when I left my home town after university in 1977, I never had cause to revisit the area.

But when Google Earth came on the scene, I was browsing old haunts. I saw the main house was gone, and I wondered what had happened to it. I tried to find out the history, without success. But I just asked in The Gosport Area, a new Facebook group for discussing memories of the town where I grew up, and somehow the process of asking cleared a mental blockage. I'd been unwittingly sabotaging the search by the assumption that "Stubbington" was a keyword; once I'd switched this to "Titchfield", results started to appear - enough to put together a brief account of the vanished house. Its history, like the villas of the southern Isle of Wight, is one of a heyday in the era of country mansions, followed by decline and decrepitude after that era ended.

Crofton House, 1897 OS map. Historic map data is (© and database right
Crown copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved
2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit
use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.

So, firstly, I found a very brief description in Pevsner:

CROFTON HOUSE, set back to the W of the Titchfield road, is a five-bay, three-storey, yellow brick mansion of c.1800. The three centre bays project slightly and are surmounted by a pediment, with fretted brickwork pattern under the cornices and slopes of the pediment (a local mannerism). A delicately composed building, unfortunately derelict at the time of writing
- Hampshire and the Isle of Wight: The Buildings of England, David Wharton Lloyd & Nikolaus Pevsner, 1967

At least with what I can find online, the traceable story does go back to "c.1800". The oldest map I can find it on is 1797 - this one, which has a "Crofton Ho" marked - but I haven't so far traced the builder. However, the successive owners in the 19th century are well-documented in newspapers archived in the Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers database. The first reference is to

On Sunday last died, JAMES MILL, Esq. of Crofton House, near Titchfield, Hants.
- The Morning Post, London, February 10, 1806

Its sale after Mill's death provides a detailed description of the house and environs.

That elegant, modern, well-constructed COPYHOLD VILLA, known as CROFTON HOUSE, most delightfully situate on an eminence, with one mile and a half from the Sea, one mile of Titchfield, nine of Southampton, three of the market town of Fareham, and 76 miles from London, in a beautiful and much-admired part of the county of Hants; commanding interesting marine views, extending to the Isle of Wight, the Needles, &c, and diversified prospects of the rich surrounding country, which abounds with game, the roads good, and the neighbourhood select and social; with pleasure ground embellished with full-grown forest trees and plantations, green house, walled garden in perfection, coach houses, stabling, and all suitable offices; farm house at short distance, with capital barns, stabling, granary and buildings and attached pasture and arable land; containing in the whole Thirty-Three Acres, with 13 Acres and a Half of Leasehold, held till Michaelmas 1811, and 4? Acres till 1807, in addition. The Villa present two handsome elevations, and contains a lofty, cheerful entrance hall, with admirable staircase, excellent well-furnished dining and drawing room, each 28 feet by 20 feet, breakfast parlour, library, boudoir, numerous family bedchambers, dressing and powdering rooms, water closets, and servants apartments; the domestic offices are of the best description, with good cellaring, and the whole well supplied with water. The purchaser may be accommodated with the appropriate Furniture, Farming Stock, &C, at a valuation.

- The Morning Post, London, August 23, 1806

("Copyhold", I didn't know, is an archaic form of land tenure based on manorial rights and law. It was finally abolished, and absorbed into modern freehold and leasehold).

The buyer was the elderly William Gemmell, who died early in 1820 aged 87 (he was buried in Titchfield on April 4 1820), and Crofton House then went up for sale again; an ad appears in the Morning Post of May 23, 1820. The next owner was a gentleman of Irish roots, Thomas Naghten (or Naghton - c. 1783-1832 - see RootsWeb, TheNaughtons in Ireland). The house was occupied by his family after his death, but a few years after the death of his daughter Louisa on February 17 1848 (aged 21), the house again was advertised for sale (Hampshire Advertiser, August 11, 1855) along with all of its contents. The ad gives an interesting glimpse of the accoutrements of a mid-Victorian mansion:

MESSRS. GREEN (28, Old Bond-Street, London,) having Sold the Estate, have received instructions from the Proprietor to SELL by AUCTION, on the Premises, Crofton House, Titchfield, near Fareham … without the least Reserve, the Excellent HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE, comprising extending frame mahogany dining tables, sideboard, and set of 14 chairs, rosewood and Spanish mahogany loo, card, occasional, writing and other tables, cabinets, cheffioneers [sic], teapoy, sofas, settees, rosewood chairs and easy chairs, costly gilt console table, set of three white and gold window cornices, damask and other hangings, Brussels, Turkey, and Kidderminster carpets, billiard table and appurtenances, capital bed chamber furniture, including prime beds and bedding, mahogany wardrobes, basin and dressing tables, drawers, cheval and dressing glasses, &c. &c. - The appendages of the domestic offices, capital brewing and dairy utensils, double actions mangle, greenhouse plant, garden seats, implements, iron roller; four prime cows, one short horn heifer, two powerful cart horses, waggon, hay and spring carts, harness, rick cloth, iron land roll, swing ploughs, corn stadle, with iron pillars, harrows, and numerous other instruments and effects.

- Hampshire Telegraph, December 15, 1855 

(A "loo table" is a tip-up table originally for playing the card game loo. "Cheffioneer" is evidently a garbling of chiffonier. "Teapoy" is also a table).

The new owner, who evidently didn't like the decor, was a Major Wingate (Major Sir George Wingate, KCSI, b. 1812, who'd had a distinguished career as an engineer officer in the East India Company). After his death on February 7th 1879, the next owner was a "Major Boyd" (some sources say "Colonel Boyd"); he died some time in the 1880s, and his widow married the Rev. Rupert W Pain in 1889 (see the Hampshire Advertiser, January 09, 1889) Crofton House remained with the Boyds into the 20th century; Who's Who lists it as the address of a Lt.-Col. Charles Purvis Boyd, J. P, who died in 1914. It finally went up for auction at an executor's sale ("re Mrs RGC Boyd, Decd.) on June 25th 1930. The Times ad for Jun 16, 1930, has the only image of the house I've been so far able to find.

Kelly's Directory for 1935, listing private residents in the Crofton area, gives the then occupant as Kenneth Charles Rees-Reynolds, who Google finds to have been a London-based chartered surveyor, and director of various companies, who died in 1963. Whether he owned/occupied the house until then, I don't know, but the decaying house and motor scrapyard I saw in 1970 suggested the house had been neglected for longer than 7 years. Its eventual end is documented in a later book:

Crofton House near Titchfield, long derelict, has, alas, been demolished after fire damage; it was a delicately composed Classical house in yellow brick.
- Buildings of Portsmouth and its environs, David Wharton Lloyd, 1974

The remaining wing of Crofton House, that adjacent to the walled garden, has been redeveloped as mews residences. The lane, like so many lanes I remember from childhood, is now gated.

Addendum: Should anyone want to pick up this topic and run with it, a National Archives search shows that the Northumberland Record Office has records of the Crofton House Estate:

Thomas John Armstrong Papers
NRO 309/H1/33  6 November 1888
The Crofton House Estate, Titchfield, near Portsmouth, (Hants)
Incl plan, and elevation of house 

Addendum: Ryan Allen, whose family owned Crofton House in its latter days, has kindly sent me a photo.

Crofton House, image reproduced courtesy of Ryan Allen

Crofton House (detail), image reproduced courtesy of Ryan Allen

Modern aerial view from Bing Maps

- Ray

On not going back

In November 2011 I wrote a post - On going back - that explored a circumstance where returning to places and people of my childhood - always an experience to be approached with caution - had worked outstandingly. It doesn't always. I've been floundering over how to tackle this topic, but I'll start with a spot of social history.

Gosport, Hampshire, the town where I was brought up, has a long history as a naval and military town supporting the infrastructure and defence of Portsmouth harbour. Until well into the 20th century, this role required defence of the town, which was thus crammed into a small area within ramparts. It was very scruffy but vigorous, judging by the number of pubs and industrial premises (see There are Six taverns in the Town and Public Houses in Gosport High Street area, c. 1850), though not without affluent areas on the High Street, and a shore area called Coldharbour (later Clarence Square) where high-ranking naval officers had Georgian town houses. However, the 20th century brought major changes: in the early 20th century, expansion of suburbs sidelined the old town area, which began to go downhill; and World War Two devastated it. As a local history book described it:

The centre of the town was left as a decaying rubbish heap, jagged blocks of masonry represented the old Thorngate Hall ... The new cinema erected just before the war remained a burned out shell ... The Trinity Church still stood, with fire bomb marks through its roof but the area around was a burned out slum, hideous to see, in the midst of which stood a few decaying almshouses. Clarence Square, once the home of Admirals, was a sordid wreck.
...
Few towns of its size had suffered so heavily during the war and at one stage more than half its habitable homes had been more or less severely damaged or obliterated.
- The Story of Gosport, LFW White, pub. SWP Barrell, 1966

As with many other towns similarly devastated, the post-war priority was restoring housing capacity - in the context of a rising birth rate - rather than reconstruction. This mostly continued to happen in the suburbs, hastening the decay of much of the old town area. Over the next few decades, virtually all that remained of it, except for the High Street, had been razed. In the mid-1960s, what was left of the southern side of the town had become open space planted with tower blocks, and the northern harbourside become industrial development. Much else, since the late 1970s, has filled in with further solely residential development, with large areas devoted to car parks. You can get an idea of the changes - click to enlarge the images - by comparing the 1850 map (nearly all of the depicted area was built-up with the traditional tight conglomeration of mixed working, trading, and residential space) and the present-day aerial view.

To get to the point, over the past few days I've been suffering an intense nostalgia. I was born in 1956, and I just about remember Gosport harbour-front in the early 1960s, before the shorefront tower blocks were built (here's a view c. 1960 of the site where Seaward Tower now stands) ...

Gosport 1960s W N Mansfield - from Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

... and also remember, from the mid-1970s, the last remnants of the northern side of the old town, the seedy North Street (see 1900 image), and Sea Horse Street that branched off it, both interrupted by bombed-out empty lots partly overgrown with buddleia. There were pubs, though I was too young to go into them: at one end of North Street was The Crown (now closed, see Google Maps Street View); and at the other, the Fox Tavern, which is still extant, though sadly run-down externally.

But their context is gone. North Street just exists as a couple of short segments on either side of a modern housing development, and much the same is true of whatever else exists of the old town. I can't blame the post-war planners - their decisions made perfect sense pragmatically within financial restraints - but it has left a town centre with little overall physical continuity with its past.

I'm not saying there's nothing to be found if you look. As I said previously, Gosport is heavily imprinted with the relics of the Victorian Cold War that resulted in the Palmerston fortifications, along with other military installations (see, for instance, Priddy's Hard). But I've visited those, and they're geeky-interest aspects of the town that have engaged me intellectually, but not especially emotionally. I can't tell how much of it is symptomatic of my current health problems, but I'm getting an uncomfortable yearning: a wish that I could re-connect with that Gosport I just about remember, when the harbour-front wasn't all aseptic marinas and I could wander out on the mud and find sailors' clay pipes, and whole streets still carried a strong echo of what it had been a century before. But that town is gone.

- Ray

Larking about

Portsmouth Harbour: HMS Warriors, with Gosport's 1960s flats beyond

On Friday we were in Portsmouth, en route to the Isle of Wight, and despite it being a dismally overcast day, we had a brief look at The Hard (Portmouth's harbour frontage).


View Larger Map
Pan left/right to compare to 1925 image below.

click to enlarge

It's an area of strange contrasts: on one side, huge amounts of money have gone into the adjacent Gunwharf Quays; and on the other, the Dockyard has undergone a deal of development as a heritage site around the Mary Rose, HMS Victory, and HMS Warrior. But in between, The Hard remains distinctly downmarket: an anodyne paved harbour frontage adjacent to the Hard Interchange, opposite a rather shabby frontage with a few folksy traditional pubs set among businesses of an extremely mundane flavour, such as a betting shop, a Co-Op, a car rental, a Chinese restaurant, a chip shop, and (weirdly) a Creationist museum.

There are undoubtedly commercial and practical reasons why it's this way; particularly, piecemeal rebuilding in gaps created by World War 2 bombing damage. But I feel it could be redeveloped now in a way that melds upmarket and traditional - as has been done at the Gunwharf Quays - without killing the Hard's use as a working harbour and transport interchange. Portsmouth does have plans, but nothing very rapid seems to be happening.

I did spot one evocative and fairly new feature: Michael Peacock's bronze sculpture commemorating the Portsmouth Mudlarks, children and adults who traditionally foraged for coins thrown from the pier. I just about remember seeing the Portsmouth Mudlarks in the very early 1960s, when I used to go to Portsmouth with my grandmother (the same trips we went to Verrecchia's - see Lime milkshake and Kunzle cake). From the descriptive sign:

The nearby statue commemorates the generations of Portsea children who enjoyed mudlarking here - entertaining travellers by retrieving coins they threw into the mud below the bridge to the harbour station and Gosport Ferry. Boys and girls would scramble to find the money tossed down, sometimes diving into the mud, performing handstands or dipping their heads in it. Many Portsea families lived in poverty, so the small change was welcomed. Usually, what the children did not spend on sweets or pie and chips was given to mum to help out the family finances.

Most parents disapproved of their children's activities, while the police regarded mudlarking as begging and tried to stop it. Mudlarking supplemented other ways of earning a few shillings, such as carrying passengers' bags or finding drivers parking spaces. The building of the new bus terminus in 1976-7 put an end to mudlarking.

Michael Peacock's website has more pictures, and background on the commissioning and construction of the sculpture: Portsmouth Mudlarks.

Mudlarks, depicted less glamorously, from The Headington Magazine, 1871

"Mudlarking" does have a much darker story than its final 20th-century incarnation as a form of begging / street entertainment. The original mudlarks were general scavengers, particularly of muddy foreshores adjacent to busy commercial harbours. As the Wikipedia entry for "mudlark" mentions, Mayhew's 1851 London Labour and the London Poor features an interview with a young mudlark (see digitaldickens.com), and Richard Rowe's Episodes in an Obscure Life (volume 3) has a chapter on the subject, A Brood of Mudlarks, which interestingly opens with an allusion to the Victorian urban myth of Thames mud being converted to butter substitute (see previously Pure bosh: a media scare):

A factory, the newspapers say, has been started for the extraction of grease out of Thames mud — grease to be exported to Holland, and thence brought back as Dutch butter. Whether any poor Londoners do really get their butter from the river's slimy bed I cannot state, but there is a little army of poor Londoners who pick their bread out of those steaming mudbanks.
- Episodes in an Obscure Life

 There have also been a number of fictional accounts, such as Captain Marryat's 1840 Poor Jack (which goes into the illegal aspects of mudlarking, where mudlarks actively connived in fencing goods and materials thrown off ships by sailors).

State-of-the-art ships in Portsmouth Harbour:
left, a Type 45 destroyer; right, HMS Warrior

- Ray

Fort Gomer

I've mentioned the Palmerston forts of Gosport, Hampshire, a couple of times previously: see Fortifications ... and Gosport (19 Aug 2009) and Priddy's Hard (5 July 2012).

I briefly mentioned Fort Gomer, which no longer exists. I just about remember it from my childhood; my mother worked as a secretary at the school opposite, and sometimes she took me in along the lane that ran to the east of the fort. It was sold and demolished in 1964, and in my teens we lived for a time on the housing estate built on the site.

Fort Gomer, 1938 OS map. Historic map data is (© and database right
Crown copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved
2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit
use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.

View Larger Map - the site as it is now. 

The estate does in part retain a 'ghost' of the fort; the western edge and south-western corner follow the original outline. Here's a superposition of that outline on the modern Google aerial photo.

In connection with all this, I just found in my scrapbook a clipping from the Portsmouth Evening News thirty years ago. They kindly granted permission for its re-use here.

---

 Fort Gomer
The memory lingers on in street names
by Chris Yandell

Gomer is Gosport's forgotten fort. It was demolished 18 years ago and only the names of several streets give a clue to its former whereabouts.

The streets - Martello Close, Moat Walk, Tower Close, and Moat Drive - form part of the Gomer housing estate, which was built in mid-Sixties.

The northern end of Galemoor Avenue roughly follows the course of the moat which surrounded the fort, and provided the soldiers with fish.

Gomer, completed in 1858, was released by the Army Department and fetched 169,000 at a Portsmouth auction in June 1964. Bidding began at £50,000.

The fort was bought by a Midlands-based construction company and demolished by a Fareham firm, which took several months to complete the project.

Included in the sale was the western side of Gomer Lane, from some Admiralty houses near Privett Road to a cottage at the Stokes Bay end.

Little has been written about Fort Gomer, and precise information is hard to come by. Few records, or photographs, appear to have survived the passage of time.

Books about Britain's coastal defences have largely ignored the fort. One published several years after Gomer was demolished said it was still in use.

Gomer was begun in 1853, when Gosport was protected by a fortified wall which ran from Trinity Green to the southern side of Forton Lake.

It was one of a row of forts built across Gosport's landward flank from Stokes Bay in the west to Portsmouth Harbour in the east.

The other forts were Rowner, Grange, Brockhurst, and Elson. All are still standing, but only Brockhurst, completed in 1862, is open to the public.

The five forts, known as the Gosport Advanced Line, were the first of their type in Britain.

Built to defend Portsmouth from attack by the French they were designed to keep the enemy further away from the harbour than the ramparts could.

An attempted landing on the Solent coast somewhere near Titchfield, followed by an attack on Gosport, was thought to be the most likely enemy strategy.

Then relations between Britain and France began to improve, and the forts guarding the Gosport peninsula stood waiting for an enemy which never came.

Gomer was considerably smaller than its nearest neighbours, and unlike Rowner, Grange and Brockhurst, did not have a circular keep.

The forts cost a total of £300,000, but the development of increasingly powerful weapons meant they were obsolete.

Ordnance development in the late 1850's, stimulated by the Crimean War, led to minor modifications at Gomer and For Elson.

But the invention of the Armstrong Gun meant the Gomer-Elson line was too close to the harbour to protect it from bombardment.

Gomer, the first of the forts to be built,w as nearly 500 feet wide, and about 800 feet long.

The eastern side of the ten-acre fort comprised of defensible barracks, built in the shape of a shallow V, and a rectangular parade ground.

The barracks contained soldiers' and officers' quarters, servants' roooms, a gaurd room, cells, an orderly room, a kitchen, and a hospital with two wards.

Ten magazines were dotted around the inside of the fort, plus two other side arms sheds. Other buildings contained stables, a coal store, and a wash house.

The entrance to the six-sided fort was about 500 feet from [sic] Gomer Lane, near what is now its junction with Broadsands Drive.

Nearby Number Two Battery was surrounded by a moat, linked to the River Alver.

The area in fron of Fort Gomer was marshland, and the water would have been used to flood the marsh if the fort was threatened.

Gomer's design was criticized in an 1856 essay about Portsmouth's fortifications. *

The author, Mr James Fergusson, said the sides were vulnerable to attack. The road at the back of the fort was another weakness, he added.

In 1886 Gomer was armed with two 13-inch mortars and 20 seven-inch rifled breech loaders. Heavier guns were placed in the more powerful forts to the north.

The exhibition at Fort Brockhurst contains a photograph taken at Fort Gomer in May 1889, of soldiers belonging to the 40th Foot Regiment.

Gomer and Elson had a fairly primitive design and it is thought unlikely they would have presented much of a threat to an attacking army.

They were reputedly used mainly as barracks for soldiers, who could have been quickly deployed to other parts of the Line if the need arose.

Gomer, the link between the other four forts and the Stokes Bay bateries, would probably have provided the men need to man the sea defences.

The fort was surrounded by open land, and when the threat of invasion was removed, all it was left to guard was a quiet countryside.

---

Moat of dinners, and death

Incidents in the history of the Fort included a man who murdered his family, and a soldier who drowned in the moat during an escape attempt.

One of the first men who served there married a Gosportgirl. The marriage ran into trouble when they moved to the Isle of Wight several years later, and he murdered his wife and their six children.

Hundreds of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the killer when he was brought back to Gosport on his way to Winchester.

Gomer was a hive of activity in the early part of 1900, when it was used to train troops for the Boer War.

Hut battle

A few years earlier, a riot had broken out among a detachment of the Dublin Fusiliers, and several men were reported to have been injured in what became known as 'The Battle of Hut Four'.

A private in the Northumberland Fusiliers died at the fort in 1914 when he climbed over the walls and sank into the mud at the bottom of the moat.

Martin Quinn was in detention, but desperately wanted to visit the theatre in Portsmouth and decided to risk the ill-fated escape attempt.

The 7th Royal Tank Regiment was stationed at Gomer in the late 1940's.

Soldiers supplemeted their rations with fish from the moat, and two troopers appeared before Gosport magistrates, accused of poaching pheasants on a nearby estate.

- © The News, Portsmouth. Reproduced for non-profit use by permission.

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* This most likely refers to James Fergusson's 1852 The peril of Portsmouth; or, French fleets and English forts.

- Ray

Priddy's Hard

Burrow Island and Priddy's Hard: click to enlarge

Further thoughts relating to a post I wrote in August 2009, Fortifications ... and Gosport.

I've never had any major nostalgie for the town where I grew up (Gosport, Hampshire). But it had some aspects of landscape that have become much more interesting with the hindsight of a better overview of history and geography: particularly that it's a town massively imprinted with the legacy of a 19th century Cold War.

This impressed me quite forcibly during my recent revisit to the Spinnaker Tower. Suburban development of the town has covered much of the peninsula on which Gosport stands, but the greenspace surrounding the town centre still gives away the almost mediaeval setup of the mid-19th century: the area was a largely agricultural tract of land dotted with hamlets, with Gosport Town crammed into a tiny harbourside enclave behind star-shaped earth ramparts. (There's a nice sketch map here at the Gosport page of Fortified Places - and aerial views show some sections of the ramparts are still extent. See Google Maps: here, here (complete with moat), and here.

I was interested in the view heading this post. It doesn't look much in the photo, but it's the outlier of the fortifications at Priddy's Hard, that formerly was Gosport's Royal Naval munitions depot. It now houses Explosion! The Museum of Naval Firepower, whose website outlines the history (the name comes from Jane Priddy, from whom.the Board of Ordnance bought the land).

The aerial view - check out Bing Maps too for a birds' eye view with rotatable viewpoint - is especially striking. Though there's housing development inside the complex andon land to the north-west adjacent to it, you can still see the ramparts, and a couple of interesting circular copses, containing buildings, that I've been wondering about for some time.


View Larger Map

I wasn't clear how exactly to 'read' this landscape, but it's very well explained in the set of documents Site PHG04/20, Priddy's Hard, Gosport, by Thames Valley Archaeological Services. The one particularly to read is the August 2004 Priddy’s Hard, Gosport,Hampshire- An Archaeological Desk-Based Assessmentfor Crest Nicholson (South) Ltd, by Jennifer Lowe.

The images alone explain most of the structures you can see. This annotated 1914 Admiralty plan shows that the round copses have grown up around the earth ramparts surrounding magazines (for obvious reasons away from the main depot); the larger was a cordite magazine. The rectangular building inside the main ramparts is another magazine (see Google Maps and the street view of its entrance on Heritage Way).

The report also has a very nice 1947 aerial photo of the depot, which shows the many small sheds dotting the open space outside the ramparts. From the similar appearance of firework factories, I'd assume these are munitions manufacturing sheds for filling shells and such like, separated so that any accidental explosion would be limited to that building and not set off the entire store.

(I've requested permission for image use, but pending that I've posted low-resolution images under the terms of the copyright statement: "This report may be copied for bona fide research or planning purposes without the explicit permission of the copyright holder" - I view this post as historical research).

I'd love to have a mooch around the derelict ramparts in the sections of the site as yet undeveloped. But unfortunately the end of military secrecy just led into an era of security-conscious landowners, and it looks solidly fenced off. However, 28DL (28DaysLater.co.uk - The UK UE Urbex Urban Exploration Forums) has several visit reports: Priddy's Hard, Gosport 17/05/07 shows a daytime visit to the main complex; Priddy's Hard, Gosport records a 2008 night-time visit; Hidden Ammo Dump-Priddys Hard - Hampshire June 2010 has photos of the magazines inside the circular copses.

Judging by the commentary, demolition and redevelopment is ongoing (the Google Maps images are already out of date - for example, the sheds in the shell-filling bays here are already gone, and the bays themselves may even have been demolished). The structures are probably not vastly significant archaeologically, but their destruction seems a pity, and not just because they appeal to my Ruinenlust. Gosport has taken a major blow economically with the withdrawal of military and naval presence, and its unique fortress heritage seems to me an asset that seems unwise to destroy (one fort that I just about remember, Fort Gomer - see photos - was completely obliterated for housing development in 1964, an action one would like to think wouldn't happen so readily nowadays. Even so, Fort Elson, despite being a Scheduled Monument and on the Buildings at Risk register, is being allowed to collapse under the English Heritage 'Controlled Ruination' policy due to mixed factors - its very poor state, and its position on a long-term military establishment, the MoD being exempt from rules requiring landlords to reinstate such properties.

Forts Fareham, Grange and Gilkicker are examples of what could be done in the way of preserving the structure of the forts while adapting them to alternative uses: Fort Fareham, though neglected in the past, finds use as a civilian industrial estate surrounded by wildground, Fort Grange contains sports fields for the HMS Sultan cadet corps, and Fort Gilkicker (hopefully- see Fortgilkicker.com) is due to be preserved by what looks like a very sympathetic conversion into residental apartments. Fort Brockhurst, the only one open to the public - though insufficiently often, in my view - is used as a store for English Heritage's reserve collections.

- Ray

Spinnaker Tower revisited

Spinnaker Tower, September 2010

On Sunday May 27th, Clare and I were at the Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth, on the way back from visiting my father on the Isle of Wight.  The haziness of the early weekend had cleared quite a bit, and I couldn't resist giving the Spinnaker Tower another visit. It has stunning views over Portsmouth Harbour, Portsmouth, Gosport, and across the Solent.

I highly recommend the Gunwharf Quays complex in general. While its general thrust is to cater for shopping, eating and entertainment, it offers a varied range (we always have lunch there on the way to the Isle of Wight) and is a stylish and sympathetic redevelopment of defunct admiralty dockland that nevertheless retains its use as a busy harbourside.

Click to enlarge any image
Sorry if the colours are a trifle funny; the thick glass has an intense cyan cast, and I've had to do my best at correcting it.

Returning, May 2012

looking 100m (328ft) down through glass floor panel

View Deck with that glass floor

View Deck 2: 'Cafe in the Clouds'

View east over Gunwharf Quays, canal, East Side
Plaza Tower ("The Lipstick") and Southsea

View south over The Camber car ferry dock and Old Portsmouth (top right)

Old Portsmouth with Isle of Wight car ferry

View approx. S, Portsmouth Harbour entrance

Fort Blockhouse, Gosport side of harbour entrance

View approx. SW: Gosport Marina, Seaward Tower, Haslar Lake, Solent, and Isle of Wight on horizon

Gosport: ferry terminus, Ferry Gardens, town centre

Gosport, view approx. NW: Burrow Island, Royal Clarence Marine, Priddy's Hard

Gosport: Burrow Island, Priddy's Hard

View approx. N: Portsmouth Dockyard, with HMS Warrior (foreground) and HMS Victory (centre)

Detail: Portsmouth Dockyard with HMS Victory

- Ray

"A Bishop storm-tossed on the ocean"

At The Growlery - Bizarrest, bizarrer, and merely bizarre... - Felix Grant just mentioned his three school songs. Being of similar vintage and educational background, I also went to a school that had a song, but a custom-written one. They didn't sing it much when I was there, in the last few years before it went comprehensive and ditched the old Grammar School traditions, but I found it at Ian Henden's website and decided to mirror it here as it seems otherwise little-documented online.

Gosport County Grammar School Song

When down the swift tide of life we are gliding
Days of our childhood left far behind
Oft in fond mem'ry Rises a picture
Calling thoughts joyful or sad to the mind
What strikes the chord of so sweet recollection?
Sportsfield and classroom, the disciplined rule
Triumphs and failures Companions so faithful
Scene of life's springtime, the School!

Chorus:

So in chorus old and young
Cheerily sing! Let it ring!
Comrades faithful, true and strong
Let it rise! To the skies!
Staunch in fair and stormy weather
Join with heart and voice together
Side by side, companions ever
To the end.

Where once a Bishop storm-tossed on the ocean
Sought peace and rest on Alwara's shore
By the historic Waters of Solent
Rises our School, may it flourish e'er more
Long through the years may its praises be sounded
If past and present we make it our rule
Whether in work or in pastime the contest
Ever to strive for the School!

Chorus

Then when our schooldays are o'er, and reluctant
Leave we at last its sheltering care
Shaping our course by worthy traditions
Calmly good fortune or evil we'll bear
And in the struggle for fame and position
With heart undaunted and courage e'er cool
Playing the game we will put into practice
Lessons we learnt at the School!

Chorus

It's a good tune but moderately challenging; at least as pitched in his MIDI, it goes right to the top of my range. According to Dave Mack's alumni site (currently down - see archive) the tune was written by Ernest Douglass (from Dictionary of organs and organists (1912): Organist Holy Trinity, Gosport, 1893-9; St. Mary's, Alverstoke, Gosport, since 1899. Conductor Gosport and Alverstoke Choral Society) and the words by S H Barker, B. Litt.

The lyrics are a masterwork of stiff-upper-lip cliché, very much the kind of thing Tom Lehrer ridiculed in Bright College Days, and the "When down the swift tide of life we are gliding" line distinctly recalls Lehrer's "sliding down the razor-blade of life", and indeed our own parody recalled by Derek Ive in a HantsWeb thread:

When down the school bannisters we are sliding
Seats of our trousers left far behind,
Oft in memory rises a splinter
Calling thoughts painful and sad to the mind.
Who is it waits at the bottom to catch you,
Tells you you've broken the discipline rule?
One of the prefects - companions so faithful -
Inhabitants of the school.

The second verse of the song refers to a Victorian-originated founding myth for the town of Gosport (whose real etymology is most likely "Goose-port"): a claimed derivation iconised on the town's old crest as "God's port, our haven" - a motto said to have been coined by either King Stephen or his brother Henry de Blois after safe delivery from shipwreck. As described in The origins of Gosport by Philip Eley, the story arose from a piece of doubtful scholarship, probably by Henry Slight, published in the Hampshire Telegraph in 1811. Despite doubts expressed by Robert Mudie in his 1838 Hampshire: The northern, eastern, and southern slopes, and the New Forest, various 19th century gazetteers swallowed the anecdote whole.  ("Alwara" was the lady of the manor of what is now Alverstoke).

- Ray

Anachronistic map

Click to enlarge

I found a very nice little curiosity, the map of the Isle of Wight and Solent area pictured in part above:

Bacon's Large Scale Map, 1 Inch to 1 Mile . Fully Coloured . Index to Place Names . 20p

The curiosity aspect is the strange cartographic mix. The price obviously places it post-decimalisation (i.e. post-1971) and it features routes for the Isle of Wight car ferry and hovercraft ferries; yet much of the cartographic detail is pre-1850s. For instance, Gosport (above) is shown prior to much of its suburban development, as well as the building of its railway (disused by the 1970s, but the track still prominent) and the line of Palmerston forts from Stokes Bay to Elson, dating from the 1850s. The area of Newport, IoW, is likewise way out of date, showing an area between Newport and Carisbrooke called New Village that was completely swamped in the late 1800s surburban development of Newport. All the cartographers appear to have done is drawn modern ferry routes, red lines on roads, and a few location names (note the amateurish typeface on the "Harb." representing Portsmouth Harbour Station) on a map over a century old.

The makers of the map are credited as Johnston & Bacon (a division of Geoffrey Chapman Ltd), and a glance at Google shows Bacon's Large Scale Map of the Isle of Wight to have been in print at least as far back as 1900. I can imagine the financial motive in avoiding unnecessary revision, but I can't fully imagine what was going through their heads, cartographically and commercially, to carry on doing so well beyond the point of the map becoming weirdly and obviously inaccurate. Johnston and Bacon were absorbed into Bartholomew's shortly after: one might say not before time, if that was their idea of mapmaking.

I guess there's a lesson there in not believing historical data points without corroboration. he proverbial "New Zealander" finding this map in the ruins of London 500 years from now might well believe it to represent accurate geography.

PS: I just found at the Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps a paper, The rivals: notes on some intermediate-scale commercial topographic map series of Britain and Ireland since 1868, that bears out my impression of Johnston & Bacon. It says of G.W. Bacon & Co.:

This celebrated or (to collectors) notorious firm of map-publishers ... reissued OS mapping, photographically copied, and with some cosmetic alterations, notably added emphasis to railways and stations, rewriting of town names (often in bold lower case rather than the OS’s capitals) and colouring of main roads ... Perhaps the firm were enabled to ‘get away with it’ because they invariably used superseded OS mapping.

- Ray