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For other places with the same name, see Portsmouth (disambiguation).
Portsmouth is a city of about 189,000 people located in the county of Hampshire on the southern coast of England, United Kingdom. The administrative unit itself forms part of the wider Portsmouth conurbation, with an estimated 442,252 residents within its boundaries, making it the 11th largest urban area in England. A significant naval port for centuries, Portsmouth is home to the world's oldest dry dock still in use and to many famous ships, which includes Nelson's famous flagship H.M.S. Victory. Portsmouth has declined as a military port in recent years but remains a major dockyard and base for the Royal Navy. There is also a commercial port serving destinations on the continent for freight and passenger traffic.
The Portsmouth Urban Area covers an area with a population well over twice that of the city of Portsmouth itself, and includes Fareham, Portchester, Gosport, Havant (which includes the large suburb Leigh Park), Lee-on-the-Solent, Stubbington and Waterlooville.
HistoryEarly history of the areaAlthough there have been settlements in the area since before Roman times, mostly being offshoots of Portchester, Portsmouth is commonly regarded as having been founded in 1180 by John of Gisors (Jean de Gisors). Most early records of Portsmouth are thought to have been destroyed by Norman invaders following the Norman Conquest. The earliest detailed references to Portsmouth can be found in the Southwick Cartularies. However, the Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names gives the Anglo-Saxon name "Portesmūða" as late 9th century, meaning "mouth [of the harbour called] Portus" (from Latin). In Anglo-Saxon times a folk etymology "[harbour] mouth belonging to a man called Port" arose, which caused a statement in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that in 501 AD "Port and his 2 sons, Bieda and Mægla, came with 2 ships to Britain at the place which is called Portsmouth".
While in the primary diocese of Portsea there was a small church prior to 1166 (now St Mary's in Fratton) Portsmouth's first real church came into being in 1181 when John of Gisors granted an acre (4,000 m²) of land to Augustinian monks at the Southwick Priory to build a chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket. This chapel continued to be run by the monks of Southwick Priory until the Reformation after which its possession was transferred to Winchester College. The modern Portsmouth Anglican Cathedral is built on the original location of the chapel. Growth of the cityIn 1194, after King Richard I (The Lionheart) returned from being held captive by Duke Leopold V of Austria, Richard set about summoning a fleet and an army to Portsmouth, which Richard had taken over from John of Gisors. On May 2, 1194 King Richard I gave Portsmouth its first Royal Charter granting permission for the city to hold a fifteen day annual fair (which became known as the Free Market Fair), weekly markets (on Thursdays), to set up a local court to deal with minor matters, and exemption from paying the annual tax ("farm") of £18 a year--instead the money would be used for local matters. The actual physical charter was handed over by the Bishop of Ely William de Longchamps. The present location of the charter is currently unknown but its text survives, as when later royal charters were granted to the city reaffirming and extending its privileges large parts of the original charter were quoted verbatim. As a crescent and an eight-point star (as appear on the city's coat of arms) were to be found on both the seals of King Richard and William de Longchamps it is commonly thought that this may have been the source of them, although there is no known documentary evidence for this. King Richard later went on to build a number of houses and a hall in Portsmouth. The hall is thought to have been at the current location of the Clarence Barracks (the area was previously known as Kingshall Green). In 1200 King John issued another charter to Portsmouth reaffirming the rights and privileges awarded by King Richard. King John's desire to invade Normandy resulted in the establishment of Portsmouth as a permanent naval base. In 1212 William of Wrotham (Archdeacon of Taunton, Keeper of the King's Ships) started constructing the first docks of Portsmouth. At about the same time Pierre des Roches (Bishop of Winchester) founded Domus Dei (Hospital of St Nicholas) which performed its duties as an almshouse and hospice until 1540 when like other religious buildings it was seized by King Henry VIII). During the thirteenth century Portsmouth was commonly used by King Henry III and Edward I as a base for attacks against France. By the fourteenth century commercial interests had grown considerably, despite rivalry with the dockyard of nearby Southampton. Common imports included wool, grain, wheat, woad, wax and iron, however the ports largest trade was in wine from Bayonne and Bordeaux. War with FranceIn 1338 a French fleet led by Nicholas Béhuchet arrived at Portsmouth docks flying English flags before anyone realised that they were a hostile force. The French burnt down most of the buildings in the town and many of the population were raped and slaughtered, only the local church and Domus Dei survived. As a result of this King Edward III gave the remaining townsfolk exemption from national taxes so that they could afford to rebuild the town. Only ten years after this devastation the town for the first time was struck by the plague known as the Black Death. In order to prevent the regrowth of Portsmouth as a threat, the French again sacked the city in 1369, 1377 and 1380. King Henry V was the first king to decide to build permanent fortification in Portsmouth. In 1418 he ordered a wooden Round Tower be built at the mouth of the harbour, which was completed in 1426. However it wasn't until the Tudor dynasty that Portsmouth's defence was seriously dealt with. Under King Henry VIII the Round Tower was rebuilt out of stone and a Square Tower was raised. It was at this time that Robert Brygandine and Sir Reginald Bray, with the support of the king, commenced the building in Portsmouth of the country's first dry dock. In 1527 with some of the money obtained from the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VIII built the fort which became known as Southsea Castle. In 1545, he saw his vice-flagship Mary Rose founder off Southsea Castle, with a loss of about 500 lives, while going into action against the French fleet. Over the years Portsmouth's fortification was increased by numerous monarchs including King Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth I, although most of these have now been converted into tourist attractions. 19th CenturyAdmiral Nelson left Portsmouth for the finally time in 1805 to command the fleet that would defeat the larger Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar.[1] The Royal Navy's reliance on Portsmouth led to the city becoming the most fortified in Europe, with a network of forts circling the city.[citation needed] From 1808 the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, who were tasked to stop the slave trade, operated out of Portsmouth. On December 21, 1872 a major scientific expedition, the Challenger Expedition, was launched from Portsmouth. 20th centuryIn 1904 the boundaries of Portsmouth were extended to finally include the whole of Portsea Island. The boundaries were further extended in 1920 and 1932, taking in areas of the mainland. In 1916 the city experience its first aerial bombardment when a Zeppelin airship bombed it during World War I.[2] The city was bombed extensively during WW2, destroying many houses and the Guildhall. While most of the city has since been rebuilt, developers still occasionally find unexploded bombs. Southsea beach and Portsmouth Harbour were military embarkation points for the D-Day landings on June 6 1944. Southwick House, just to the north of Portsmouth, had been chosen as the headquarters for the Supreme Allied Commander, US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, during D-Day. After the war, much of the city's housing stock was damaged and more was cleared in an attempt to improve the quality of housing. Those people affected by this were moved out from the centre of the city to new developments such as Paulsgrove and Leigh Park. 21st centuryIn 2003 erection was started of a 552 feet high Spinnaker Tower sited at Portsmouth Harbour, and celebrating the city's maritime tradition. Completed in 2005, the tower has twin concrete legs meeting at half height to form a single column from which steel sails are mounted; an observation deck at the top provides a view of the city and harbour for tourists. In late 2004, the Tricorn Centre, dubbed "The ugliest building in the UK" was finally demolished after years of delay and wrangling over the cost of doing so, and controversy as to whether it was worth preserving as an example of sixties Brutalist architecture. In 2005, Portsmouth was a focus for Sea Britain, a series of events to mark the 200th anniversary (bicentenary) of Lord Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. In particular, in June, there was the massive Fleet Review, by HM Queen Elizabeth II and a mock battle (son et lumière) that evening, after dark. EconomyThis is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Portsmouth at current basic prices published (pp.240-253) by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.
GeographyImage:Portsmouth.jpg East facing aerial view of Portsmouth (with Gosport in the foreground) Image:Portsmouth-from-PortsdownHill.jpg View over Portsmouth from Portsdown Hill. Image:Portsmouth roadmap 1948.jpg A partial roadmap of part of Portsmouth in 1948 Most of the city of Portsmouth lies on Portsea Island,yet Portsmouth is not a island Hayley Passaway located where the Solent joins the English Channel. This makes Portsmouth the United Kingdom's only island city and the thirteenth most densely populated place in Europe. It is the second most densely populated place in the UK, after Inner London.[3] The island is separated from the mainland to the north by a narrow creek, bridged in places to make it - in appearance - a peninsula. The sheltered Portsmouth Harbour lies to the west of the island and the large tidal bay of Langstone Harbour is to the east. Portsdown Hill dominates the skyline to the north, providing a magnificent panoramic view over the city, and to the south are the waters of the Solent with the Isle of Wight beyond. Being a seaside city, it is low-lying -- the majority of its surface area is only about 9 feet above sea level. The city includes the following districts on the island:
And these districts on the mainland:
EducationHigher and further educationThe city has one university, the University of Portsmouth (previously Portsmouth Polytechnic), but several local colleges also have the power to award HNDs. Local further education colleges include Highbury College, the largest, which specializes in vocational education and Portsmouth College, which offers a mixture of academic and vocational courses in the city. Additionally there is South Downs College and Havant College, both of which offer a range of academic and vocational courses available just outside the city. Secondary educationLocal secondary schools are Admiral Lord Nelson School, City of Portsmouth Girls' School, King Richard School, Mayfield School, Milton Cross School, Priory School, Springfield School, St Edmund's RC School, St Luke's C of E VA Secondary School and City of Portsmouth Boys' School. Independent schools include the Portsmouth Grammar School, Mayville High School, Portsmouth High School and St John's College. Both Admiral Lord Nelson School and Milton Cross School were built recently to meet the demand of a growing young population. GovernmentImage:Porstmouth 01.JPG Portsmouth Guildhall The city is administered by Portsmouth City Council, which is currently a unitary authority. Until April 1, 1997 it was a non-metropolitan district of Hampshire. Portsmouth remains part of the Ceremonial county of Hampshire. The city council is made up of 42 councillors. These are returned from 14 wards, each ward having three councillors. The wards are Baffins, Central Southsea, Charles Dickens, Copnor, Cosham, Drayton and Farlington, Eastney and Craneswater, Fratton, Hilsea, Milton, Nelson, Paulsgrove, St. Jude and finally St. Thomas. Where a ward is named after an area of the city, it will also include parts not considered part of the traditional area. MediaITV1 Meridian is the local channel 3 television service. Portsmouth was one of the second-tier of cities in the UK to get a local TV station, MyTV, in 2001. The station later rebranded to PortsmouthTV, but its limited availability in some parts of Portsmouth had limited its growth, and the station later went off-air as a result of the parent company becoming insolvent. The local commercial radio station is 107.4 The Quay, whilst the city also has a non-profit community radio station Express FM on 93.7. Other radio stations that are based outside of Portsmouth, but still broadcast to it are Ocean FM, on 97.5FM, Power FM on 103.2FM, Wave 105 on 105.2FM and BBC Radio Solent on 96.1FM. Original 106 launched on 1 October, 2006 - although based in Southampton, they have a newsroom in the Portsmouth area. When commercial radio stations were originally being licenced in the 1970s by the IBA, Radio Victory was the radio service for Portsmouth, however in 1986 it was replaced by Ocean FM. With the launch of cable television, Victory was relaunched as a cable station. The station went on to win a Radio Authority small scale licence, launching on the 107.4FM frequency. However, due to bad RAJAR figures the station relaunched in 2001 as The Quay. The city currently has one daily local newspaper known as The News, together with a free weekly newspaper, from the same publisher, called The Journal. Portsmouth also has a weekly magazine called the Portsmouth and District Post which is sold in Portsmouth, Havant, Fareham, Gosport and Waterlooville. MusicThe city has three established music venues: The Wedgewood Rooms, The Pyramids and The Guildhall. The city produces a large number of bands across a variety of genres. The most successful bands to have emerged from Portsmouth in the past quarter of a century are The Cranes and Ricky - both of whom enjoyed critical acclaim and minor chart success. ShoppingIn the last decade the number of shops in Portsmouth has grown dramatically due to both the buoyancy of the local economy and improved transport links. Shopping areas in the city include:
Other shopping areas with more than twenty shops include North End, Fratton Road, the pedestrianised Palmerston Road (the principal shopping centre of Southsea), Elm Grove/Albert Road, and Cosham High Street. SportThe city is home to FA Premier League football team, Portsmouth F.C., who play their home games at Fratton Park. 'Pompey', as the club is colloquially known, are the most successful football club south of Birmingham (with the exception of London clubs), having twice been crowned Champions of England. Having secured planning permission, the club are in the process of building a new stadium on the same site. Locks Sailing Club at Longshore way is the city's premier dinghy sailing club. Portsmouth Rugby Football Club play their home games in the London Division at Rugby Camp, Hilsea. The city's rowing club is located in Southsea at the Seafront near the Hovercraft Terminal. Tourist AttractionsImage:HMSVictory2.jpg HMS Victory in dry dock. Image:Spinnaker Tower and harbour.JPG Spinnaker Tower & Harbour. Most of Portsmouth's tourist attractions are related to its naval history. In the last decade Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard has been given a much needed face-lift. Among the attractions are the D-Day museum (which holds the Overlord Embroidery) and, in the dockyard, HMS Victory, the remains of Henry VIII's flagship, the Mary Rose (raised from the sea-bed in recent years), HMS Warrior (Britain's first iron-clad steamship) and the Royal Naval Museum. The millennium project to build the Spinnaker Tower at Gunwharf Quays was completed in 2005. The tower is 552 ft tall and features viewing decks at sea level, 325 ft, 341 ft and 357 ft. Other tourist attractions include the birthplace of Charles Dickens, the Blue Reef Aquarium (formerly the Sea Life Centre), Cumberland House (a natural history museum), The Royal Marines Museum and Southsea Castle. Places of worshipImage:Porstmouth 02.JPG St John's Cathedral Portsmouth is unusual among British cities in having two cathedrals; the Anglican cathedral of St Thomas, in Old Portsmouth, and the Roman Catholic cathedral of St John the Evangelist, in Edinburgh Road, Portsea. The historic reason for this is that when Catholics were permitted to re-establish cathedrals in the UK in the nineteenth century, they were only allowed to do so in places without an existing Church of England cathedral, e.g. Birmingham, Arundel, Southwark, Westminster and Salford. This restriction has now been abolished, as at Liverpool and Bristol (Clifton). Portsmouth's Catholic cathedral was consecrated in 1882. Later, when Portsmouth was raised to city status in 1926, St Thomas's Anglican Church was also raised to cathedral status. When St Mary's Church, Portsea, was rebuilt in Victorian times, it had been envisaged that it might be the cathedral if city status was achieved, but St Thomas's was given the honour because of its historic status. Another historic old Portsmouth church, the Garrison Church, was bombed during World War II with the nave left roofless as a memorial. There are numerous other active churches and places of worship throughout the city (see links at end for some websites). Transport and communicationsImage:Portsmouth-SpinnakerTower.jpg The Spinnaker Tower, as seen from Gunwharf Quays. The city has several mainline railway stations, on a direct route to London. Portsmouth's stations are (in order, out of the city): Portsmouth Harbour, Portsmouth & Southsea, Fratton, Hilsea and Cosham. Portsmouth Harbour has passenger ferry links to Gosport and the Isle of Wight. A car ferry service to the Isle of Wight operated by Wightlink is nearby. Britain's longest-standing commercial hovercraft service, begun in the 1960s, still runs from near Clarence Pier to Ryde, Isle of Wight, operated by Hovertravel. Local bus services are provided by First in Hampshire & Dorset and Stagecoach serving the city of Portsmouth and the surroundings of Havant, Leigh Park, Waterlooville, Fareham and long distance service 700 to Chichester, Worthing and Brighton There are three road links to the mainland. These are the M275, A3 (London Road) and A2030 (Eastern Road). The city is connected to Route 2 of the the National Cycle Network. Portsmouth Continental Ferry Port has links to Caen, Cherbourg-Octeville, St Malo and Le Havre in France, Bilbao in Spain and the Channel Islands. Ferry services from the port are operated by Brittany Ferries, P&O Ferries, Condor Ferries and LD Lines. On 18 May 2006 Acciona Trasmediterranea started a service to Bilbao in competition with P&O’s existing service. This service got off to a bad start when the ferry 'Fortuny' was detained in Portsmouth by the MCA for numerous safety breaches. The faults were quickly corrected by Acciona and the service took its first passengers from Portsmouth on the 25 May 2006. The port is the second busiest ferry port in the UK after Dover handling around 3 million passengers a year and has direct access to the M275. There is an ongoing debate on the development of public transport structure, with monorails and light rail both being considered. A light rail link to Gosport has been authorised but is unlikely to go ahead following the refusal of funding by the Department for Transport in November 2005.[1] The monorail scheme is unlikely to proceed following the withdrawal of official support for the proposal by Portsmouth City Council, after the development's promoters failed to progress the scheme to agreed timetables.[2] The nearest airport is Southampton which is approximately 20-30 minutes away. Heathrow and Gatwick are both about 60-90 minutes away. Portsmouth had an airport with grass runway from 1932 to 1973; after its closure, housing, industrial sites, retail areas and a school were built on the site. The telephone area code for Portsmouth is 023 followed by an eight digit number (usually beginning with 92), and was previously (01705), and before that (0705). Future developmentsImage:Portsmouth.naval.750pix.jpg Portsmouth Naval Dockyard. Development at Gunwharf Quays will continue until 2007 with the completion of the 29 storey East Side Plaza. Development of the former Brickwood Brewery site, now under way, will include a 22 storey tower known as the Admiralty Quarter Tower. Portsmouth's regeneration is being continued in the city centre with the controversial demolition of the Tricorn Centre, a long abandoned shopping mall and car park, described as a "concrete monstrosity". The site is due to be transformed by 2010 to include shops, cafés and restaurants, a four-star 150-bed hotel, 200 residential apartments, and a 2,300-space car park. The rebuilding of Fratton Park, home to Portsmouth Football Club is set to hold 35,000 fans. The stadium will be built to allow Portsmouth to compete successfully in English Football's Premier League. Along with the stadium, 500 houses will be built in a development called Pompey Village. These plans have been superseded by plans to build a 50,000+ capacity stadium. The club is currently in negotiations with Portsmouth City Council to try to find another site with better road access and more space for other development. Possible locations are:
Portsmouth in literaturePortsmouth is the chief location for Jonathan Meades' novel Pompey (1993) ISBN 0-09-930821-5, in which it is inhabited largely by vile, corrupt, flawed freaks. He has subsequently admitted that he had never actually visited the city at that time. Since then he has presented a TV programme about the Victorian architecture in Portsmouth Dockyard. ListsChronology
Famous residents
Population
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