My Family
Matters
Portsdown Hill
Gosport
Alverstoke
Portsmouth Harbour
Hayling
Island
Portsea
Island
Southsea
Langstone
Harbour
Spithead
Point
Haslar Creek
Portchester
Even today, at high tide and courtesy of a large pipe, there is an island on which stand Portsmouth and Southsea. This is Portsea Island. To the west and east are natural harbours.
Portsmouth Town
Town Wall
Town Wall
Dockyard
Mill Pond
New
Buildings
Portsmouth Common/
Portsea Town
Point
Dockyard Wall
The western harbour satisfied the criteria for a dockyard: it is a huge body of water
with a deep water channel; it has a narrow mouth that may be easily defended and
is relatively close to London. So, in the late twelfth century, a small settlement
was established at the south-
Extending northwards from Portsmouth Town was a narrow shingle peninsular which created a small natural harbour within a harbour. The spit was Portsmouth Point and the inlet was The Camber. A depiction of Portsmouth Town dated 1545 shows no houses at Point but some maritime trading activity – a crane and pulleys; men rolling barrels to load a boat in the Camber. By 1663, dwellings at Point along Broad Street had been built and the Camber was a small commercial port (as distinct from the naval dockyard).
To the north of Portsmouth Town was a large tidal mill pond which created a natural barrier. North of the pond was a large tract of land called The Common (not to be confused with Southsea Common and also described as West Docks Fields).
Beyond the Common, the Dockyard was built which was also protected by a wall. To accommodate dockyard artisans, houses were built on The Common around St George’s Square and Havant Street. This district (which was regarded as a suburb of Portsmouth Town) was known as Portsmouth Common and, later, as Portsea Town. The settlement rapidly expanded and in 1801, with a population of 24,327, it was more than three times the size of Portsmouth Town.
Dockyard
A
N
Above is section from the first map. Based on a sketch dated 1663 , it shows
the south-
A
N
The Camber
B
The Hard
To understand life in the little township, one must sense not only its close proximity
to a rapidly-
The Dockyard provided background music for the community. New Buildings was dominated by ‘the busy sound of the Yard. To strangers and visitors it was just a confused and deafening noise. When you got to know it, you distinguished half a dozen distinct sounds which made up that inharmonious and yet not unpleasing whole....you could not see it, but you felt it, and knew it was there’.
Another sense, smell, would have been assailed at low tide as New Buildings looked
out over harbour mud. Nostrils were filled with the stench of sludge, decaying seaweed
and that double-
The street names of New Buildings changed as national heroes and local personalities
emerged. Thus, Sandwich Street (which was known as Middle Street in 1777) referred
to the First Sea Lord, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who attempted to root out corruption
in the Dockyard. However, his investigation also uncovered abuses by the workers
who lived in these streets! The name, Seymour Street, first appears in 1796 and
was a reference to Lord Hugh Seymour an Admiralty Commissioner (1795-
Jarman’s Place, Sharpe’s Buildings and Fisher Street were coined after owners and residents. Gravel Lane and Gravel Row were so called because they were close to the gravel pits of Portsmouth Common.
Brunswick Street was allocated funds for paving in 1770 -
The Parade was a place of assembly. Once a year, the inhabitants elected a mock ‘mayor’ who then sat in state at the Parade as a local company (the ‘Royal Stiffs’) marched past. The ceremony and festivities concluded with great bonfire at what became known as ‘Bonfire Corner’.
Because of its position, New Building people were mainly mariners and dockyard workers with their families.
The township’s proximity to the sea brought in its wake specialized trades. Watermen plied their services at the water’s edge and ferried customers in their wherries around harbour, to moored ships and also across to Gosport. Wooden ships, temporarily anchored in Porchester Lake or nearby Fountain Lake, were broken up and their timbers sold by firms such as Clarke and Carter. Cargoes of coal, house slates and ‘weevil grains’ were landed and sold from stores and yards.
Scattered among residents were the support tradesmen who supplied the community’s
basic needs. New Buildings had two breweries (Prince of Wales and Pink and Collins),
at least two taverns (The Magpie and The Monkey and Grapes), a ship breakers yard,
a bake-
Social amenities included a bowling alley, a chapel and a brave attempt of an infant’s school at Seymour Street which opened in April 1827 and, being funded by public contributions and needing £100 to survive each year, ran into immediate financial difficulties.
According to the 1775 Rate Book, the numbering of houses at New Buildings ended at 112, which may indicate the size of the neighbourhood. The homes were well over a century old and, like the rest of Portsea, in an insanitary state.
The plans of New Buildings show that most homes were terraced with a small yard. In the early 1820s when properties were sold, sometimes descriptions and rents were included:
· 1805. 19 and 20 Gravel Lane. Annual rent – six guineas each.
· 1829. Three tenements at Seymour Street with cellar, parlour, kitchen, three bedrooms
and a yard. Frontage: 30 feet; depth 28 feet. Total annual rent -
· 1832. Seven homes at Wolfe’s Court. Total annual rent -
· 1838. 40 and 41 Sandwich Street. Each with two cellars, front and back sitting rooms, four bedrooms and an attic.
One sale prospectus helpfully added some details about the water supply to some houses.
It detailed five newly-
In the 1830s, the days of New Buildings were numbered. The Dockyard leviathan was
again on the crawl. A sea-
Sure enough, the death knell of New Buildings sounded in 1844 with the serving of notice of the Admiralty’s intention to purchase land for its enlargement. The Hampshire Telegraph of 12 July 1845 trumpeted: ‘New Steam Basin’. It reported that ‘the business of removing about 130 occupants from their various localities has been most ably managed...with one or two exceptions the properties were of small value’. Yet a few words later, it was stated that ‘many objections at first arose and threats were held out...’. It concluded that the Admiralty has shown much consideration in ejecting the tenants and in the cases of three old widows who were merely tenants but who had lived in their respective holdings for perhaps all their lives, they have been given £8 or £10 a year for the future’.
It might be thought that this report is a perhaps rose-
By 1848, New Buildings had become Demolished Buildings.
The streets of New Buildings
The buildings of New Buildings
New Buildings and the 1841 Census
A snapshot of New Buildings emerged on 6 June 1841, when the census was taken. Before summarizing these figures, it should be noted that these relate to the streets which were taken into the Dockyard from 1845 as shown in the map above. Not included are the streets that run toward the area such as Frederick Street, Gloucester Street and Marlborough Row. (It is uncertain whether these streets were included in the district known as New Buildings.)
The area comprised of 148 dwellings and a further fifteen which were uninhabited
-
The adult population of the area was dominated by royal navy and merchant navy mariners (39), their wives who remained at home when their men went to sea (36) and naval pensioners (20). Thus, 41% of adults were connected to the royal and merchant navies.
Many Dockyard artisans were still living at New Buildings. They included shipwrights
(9), rope-
The remainder of workers were the infrastructure of the community: watermen (12),
cordwainers/shoemakers (9), tailors (4), bakers (3), fishermen (2), coal merchant
(2), grocers (2), uncategorized merchants/shopkeepers (5), a miller, a fruiterer,
a fishmonger, a draper, a lighter-
Included in this list were those supplying beer and liquor. There were two brewers. Also, three publicans (two of whom also worked: one as a painter, the other as a tailor) and three licensed victuallers. One publican was at Wolf’s Court, but the rest were clustered along Sandwich Street.
Portsmouth Harbour
Landing Stage
Chapel
Brewery
Dockyard
Wolfs Court
Sandwich Street
Fisher Street
Brewery
Kings Place
Dockyard
Wall
Sharps Buildings
Brunswick Row
Marlborough
Row
Gloucester Street
Frederick Street
Bowling Alley
Gravel Lane
The
Parade
The
Spain
Seymour Street
Gravel
Row
N
Wilton House
Mere House
Strongs Buildings ?
Magpie Tavern
Coach-
Monkey and Grapes Tavern
The Bower
Bunkers Place
Jarmans
Place
Hanover Row
Above is a map of New Buildings (section from the second map) when they were taken into the Dockyard in 1847. This area was approximately 200 metres wide by 100 metres.
I am particularly interested in this area as some of my family lived here. The papers of HMS Sapphire record that my greatx2 grandfather, James Mills, was born at Sharps Buildings in 1819. They had moved to Strongs Buildings by 1824. A branch of my ancestral Hambley family was living at Gravel Lane also in 1824. However, by 1841, the Mills’ had moved to East Street at Portsmouth Point.
B
By 1700, Portsmouth Town, with its constraining walls, was bursting at the seams. The pressing need for new homes was given impetus and direction by the distance that Dockyard artisans had to travel to their place of work.
The result was a new housing development at Portsmouth Common, despite the obstacle
posed by the decree that ‘no person can erect buildings or do anything to the prejudice
of the Kings fortifications’. Thus, by the beginning of the eighteenth century at
New Buildings (beside the Dockyard’s wall to the north-
An obvious reason for this spot being selected initially was that there was a gate nearby that allowed workers access to the Dockyard .
The proximity of New Buildings to the Dockyard resulted in an alarm being flagged-
One solution was proposed by T Seymour: The ‘shutting up of the north-
The governor of the Board of Ordinance threatened to turn his guns on the newly-
Sights, sounds and smells of Portsea, New Buildings
The last days of New Buildings
Local trades and amenities
The Dockyard New Buildings