I was born as Mary Tilbury in the Wheelbarrow! Well actually the pub was called the Castle Hotel at the time. They did however find a wheelbarrow in the basement and someone remembered that it was used to cart inebriated matelot’s back to their ships, so they changed the name. I was born in the same year as Peter Sellers, who is remembered on a blue plaque across the road from the pub for those who want to guess my age. I went to Portsmouth High School and went to work in the National Provincial bank on the Hard (now the Genesis Museum) and surprise surprise met a sailor, Andy – my husband of over 50 years.

I’ve always been a keep fitter and still swim, but apart from my Grandad (and more of him later) my husband has some interesting history. Andy is a rarity – a tee-totalling Scot with his own strong sporting links. He played professional football before being called up in 1950 and we still have a photo of him scoring for Brechin City against Dundee in the Forfar Cup. He was paid £4 a week and with all the talk of bonuses at the moment he was incentivised enough with an extra £1 for a draw and massive 50% or £2 for a win !

After coming out of the Navy he had trials with Pompey but settled down to have a ‘proper job’ whilst playing number 10, or inside left as it was then, for Fareham Town who were the ‘bees knees’ in the Hampshire League. He lectured in mechanical engineering at Highbury College and finished up as Deputy Head, and it was whilst there that he made an interesting and little known contribution to the Cathedral. David Stancliffe, the then Provost had seen a Peace Globe in Stockholm Cathedral and liked the symbolism and contacted Andy asking if he could have one made. Andy pointed out that the Swedish version was in gold and his students at the time only had 12 weeks experience so it wasn’t such a good idea. He then did some research including having an atheist student study all the types of Christian crosses and then came up with the final design, which his students fashioned out of scrap metal into the handsome version hanging in the Cathedral today.

Andy hung up his boots in 1965 and whilst playing squash he watched a Real Tennis game at Hayling Island and has been playing the game ever since. This is the game where the court is a courtyard and you can hit the ball off the walls and roof ! He tells me that its a bit like chess on the move and that a better tactician can beat a better tennis player. I know the club used to be the only place in the world where five racquet sports were played. Can you name all five?

Anyway at last I can get back to the reason which started me off on this article and that was Portsmouth FC. My Grandad was Bob Blyth (1870-1941) another Scot, who is in the 1899 Pompey photo (2nd from left on the middle row). Interesting that there are just 11 of them, not the 23 + hangers on that we took to the World Cup. They had only been formed the previous year and 1899 was their first year in the Southern League. He probably played in their first game at Fratton Park; a ‘friendly’ against Southampton, which they won 2-0. He must have been coming to the end of his playing career then, as he managed Pompey from 1901 to 1904 and later became a director and then Chairman. Previously he had played for Rangers and Preston North End who were a big club then, as did his nephew Bill Shankly of Liverpool who once said of football “It’s not life or death – it’s much more important than that !”

At one stage while he was still playing, my Grandad also used to manage the Talbot Hotel which is still there in Fratton, and my mother told me that she got married from there. His brother William Blyth and his son (my uncle) also played for Pompey so quite a strong connection with the Blues.
Another interesting event in our family football history was when Pompey won the FA Cup in 1939. It was brought back to Portsmouth and, for the want of a safer place overnight it was placed under my parents’ bed in the Castle Hotel! (You could have a quiz question: When was the Cup left in a Wheelbarrow?)

Well that’s my tale; sorry it rambled a bit but they say there’s a story in everybody and this is just some of mine. I look forward to reading yours.

P.S. The five racquet sports at Hayling are: tennis, real tennis, squash, badminton and racquets.

Ros turned up at Wyggeston Girls Grammar School in Leicester as she had ‘luckily’ won a scholarship. She modestly recalled that she went from being near the top of the class in Fawcett Road to being near the bottom at Wyggeston. She recovered from this initial dip in form but said that the academic standard was much higher at her new school and that she was privileged to be there as there were many very bright children and that ‘most of the parents were professional people’. Ros added that she’d passed her school certificate aged 16 and maybe she’d been lucky with the timing as just after this occasion her dad was called up again and the family returned to Portsmouth. Her dad was one of the few who served in the Royal Marines and came through both World Wars unscathed.

She spent World War II with her family settled just off Fawcett Road and she started work, first in the naval stores and then at one of the then two Post Offices in Albert Road. She said there were times when you almost got used to the threat of bombing and the bombing itself and she remembered the Portsmouth Blitz of January 1941 and being a foolish teenager: a bomb had landed in the street just outside and with curious youth she opened the front door to see what was happening and at that moment a piece of shrapnel hit the canopy over her head and bounced onto the street. She thought afterwards how ‘lucky’ she’d been but at the time thought nothing of this, just rushed out to collect the potential memorabilia shrapnel and ‘luckily’ only touched the object before discovering how very, very, very hot it was, so left it there until the next day. She did recover it and like many of you she kept it for decades before discarding it ‘as I thought nobody would know what it was’.

Continuing the lucky theme, she said that her brother came through the second war serving on HMS Kenya and on the Malta and Russian convoy. I researched HMS Kenya and learned that she came through the war and was nick-named curiously the Pink Lady! Amazingly they used Mountbatten Pink for her camouflage paint for a Norwegian commando raid. The Germans were using pink marker dye in their shells and their spotters couldn’t distinguish between shell splashes and the ship’s camouflage.

Ros showed me a picture of her family with her dad and brother alongside her and her mum outside Town station which we know as Portsmouth and Southsea. She said there was always a photographer there. I found this quite sad as they were photographing people returning to their units possibly never to return. Like her cousin Frank Austin who was last seen with his captain on the bridge of the battleship HMS Barham before it was sunk by German torpedoes in the Med. The dramatic end when the magazines exploded and two thirds of the 1,000 crew died was filmed by a Pathe reporter from another ship but not released until after the war to protect both those who lost loved ones and also public morale. (The sinking is often used now as stock footage in documentaries and featured in a number of films including The Guns of Navarone). In fact news of the ships demise was not released for two months and even the Germans didn’t know of their success.

I set out to write a paragraph on Ros in the Wrens so I’d better do it. Her dad and brother were in the Marines and as she put it ‘everybody then had to do something for the war. You had to be interviewed for WRNS as it was the smallest service but the most popular with women. She was accepted and then ‘you just went about your work again and waited until you’re number came up’ and hers did in 1943. With her School Certificate and experience from the costing office at the British United Shoe Manufacturing Company in Leicester she was posted as a Leading WRN to be a pay writer at Lee on the Solent.

She recalls that the weekly pay was rounded down to the half a crown below and that the amount owing was paid to the sailors as a ‘settlement’ every quarter. Ros had her own system though, and thought it better if she paid the settlement to her men in their pay when they went on leave. As you would expect Ros’s system pleased the men and she said they often brought her flowers on their return from leave. She didn’t find out until much later that they stole the flowers from the officers’ gardens!

As you’d expect, she was good at her job finally getting promoted to Petty Officer and doing the pay for the Fleet Air Arm pilots. She is proud of her PO uniform ‘cos you got a tricorn hat and brass buttons’!

Before I finish this piece on Ros I must say its been me who’s been lucky. Lucky to meet someone like Ros, R.I.P.
I didn’t want to take any more of Ros’s time but just as I was leaving her flat she came up with a sad but fascinating story about her dad, who like most veterans didn’t talk about the wars he was in, although after his wife died he did start reminiscing. When in his ‘80s he decided he wanted to see his brother’s grave in Belgium. They had both fought at the Somme and were to meet up there but sadly couldn’t. Ros decided to take him on an organised tour of the Great War battlefields and as someone who actually took part in the war, the tour made a fuss of him and made sure they included the cemetery he wanted to visit.

There is no grave as, for so many, the body could not be identified. However being called Dudley his name is remembered on a panel with 20,000 others on the Loos memorial which surrounds the Dud’s Corner Cemetery. (So called not after her uncle but because of the large number of unexploded shells found here after the Armistice).

She remembers finding her uncle’s name on one of the many panels and not far away was the name of John, aged 18, the son of Rudyard Kipling. As many of you will know John, like his Nobel-prize-winning-father was very short sighted. Rudyard couldn’t join the Royal Navy for this reason but despite his son failing the medicals his imperialist father pulled strings to get him into the Irish Guards.

Rudyard was to regret this all his life when John was killed in his first and last battle. After the war he worked tirelessly with the War Graves Commission and it was him who came up with the phrase on unknown service graves ‘Known unto God’.

Sorry to end on this truism but filled with sadness and regret Rudyard wrote in his Epitaphs of War:
‘If any question why we died – tell them because our fathers lied.’

At that time, we were living at 81A St Thomas’s Street which was in the back garden of No 81 and must originally have been built for the servants and staff looking after the occupants of the big house which fronted onto St Thomas’s Street.

Little did I know at the time, but the gap in the housing on the right hand side of the road would become the back of the Portsmouth Town Court development – for which I would be the project architect!

I’ve included another photo of one of the street parties. This one looks a bit better organised and must have been to celebrate VJ day in the summer of 1945. This picture also shows the air raid shelter built on the carriageway of St Thomas’s Street near the Lombard Street junction.

Old buildings were still in existence in Oyster Street which then continued through to White Hart Road. There was a small general shop by White Hart Alley and, further along, the buildings were used for government surplus stores which made available useful items which were generally unobtainable in those austerity days. At one time they had a consignment of large kites which seemed big enough to support a man and these were much sought after for the bamboo poles and the fabric (silk or nylon?) of which they were made. In White Hart Road, there were storage buildings which were rented to French onion men who would tie their onions into strings and hang them over the handlebars of their bikes then ride around the town offering them for sale.

In High Street in front of the Cathedral, there was a row of shops including a butcher, a greengrocer and a men’s hairdresser, all long since gone. There were also shops further up High Street, past the junction with Highbury Street. The ones I remember are a tobacconist, High Street Fur Stores and Barrels, who seemed to sell mostly typewriters, and of course the Tuck Shop opposite Portsmouth Grammar School; the buildings containing these particular shops are still in existence but have now been converted into dwellings. Another building which has been lost is the Fountain Hotel in High Street near Grand Parade.

In the 1950’s, Old Portsmouth was given over to industry and trade as well as providing residences for many who worked in the area. Coal merchant’s, Fraser and White’s had huge concrete bunkers on the quay to the inner Camber between Seager’s Court and the Bridge Tavern. Three travelling cranes ran on rails along the top of the walls to the bunkers and were used to unload the bulk cargo ships (colliers) which docked by the quay to deposit their coal into the bunkers. Fraser and White’s also had barges. These were mostly constructed of concrete, and presumably were used for transporting coal to the Isle of Wight and other local ports.

Local distribution of the coal in the Portsmouth area was by four-wheeled rubber-tyred horse-drawn carts. The horse stables were in Lombard Street, on part of the site now occupied by Lombard Court, and backed onto our garden.

The Power Station also used coal at that time and, for a period after the war, the land bounded by St Thomas’s Street, Highbury Street and Warblington Street became a storage facility for its fuel. This coal was fairly fine stuff and stacked up to a good height, sufficient to make an exciting slope for us children to slide down on tin trays! As the Power Station was enlarged in the late forties, the dry dock in the outer Camber (where the Isle of Wight link-span is now sited) was taken over for the C.E.G.B’s (Central Electricity Generating Board’s) own colliers to bring coal direct to the Power Station. The coal was unloaded from the ships by crane onto conveyor belts which carried it over Gunwharf Road into the building. Two of the regular colliers which used this dock I remember were aptly named the Pompey Light (who’s bell can be seen in Viviers) and the Pompey Power.

With Fraser and White’s operations, the Power Station and most people relying on coal for heating, it will be readily appreciated that the atmosphere contained considerable amounts of dust and pollution. Additionally, most houses had sliding sash windows or ill-fitting casements (no weather-stripped double-glazed units in those days) which allowed dust easy access into people’s homes. Washing hung out to dry would also attract soot and so cleaning was a never-ending battle.

The other major industry was Vosper’s Shipbuilders which had its yard in White Hart Road with slipways into the Camber – now the site of the King James Quay housing development. The Camber was also the destination for ships bringing in fruit and potatoes which were off-loaded by the ships’ own derricks or by mobile cranes on the quay. Add to this the small fishing boats and privately owned boats which were moored in the Camber, together with boats run by Pickfords and Crouchers between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, and you can get the picture that this was a bustling little port.

My grandfather, George Feltham, had a boat-building business (G.A. Feltham & Sons) and his workshop had a slipway onto the Camber. The building is still there at the top of the Camber but has been altered to provide living accommodation over a boathouse. The Camber has now been partially filled in for the new housing development and to form part of the Millennium Walk, this section being known as Feltham Row. The boats were entirely of wooden construction and were limited in size by the nature of the premises. During the war, I believe that the work was entirely for the Admiralty, building whalers which were 27 foot clinker double-enders for use as ship’s boats etc. These boats were propelled by oars or sails but, after the war, a new design was adopted which were of double skin construction and had engines although I don’t remember many of these being built.

The extensive bombed sites had been cleared of rubble by the end of the war and nature had started to take over. Buddleias grew in profusion and, when in flower, attracted a wide variety of butterflies. Being children, the tragedy of the lives and buildings lost through bombing did not at that time impact on our consciousness – we just regarded the cleared sites as our playgrounds.

In the early 1950’s, the CEGB compulsorily purchased the houses on the north and west sides of Lombard Street and St Thomas’s Street, including our house, to construct their new offices (which is now Lombard Court) and so we were forced to move out and we then went to live in Southsea!

Old Portsmouth has changed beyond recognition in the last fifty years, undoubtedly for the better. Large areas have been redeveloped following the devastation caused by the war but there are still parts where the original buildings have survived to remind us of the history and interest which it still provides.

Mollie recalled how very welcoming and friendly everyone was in Old Portsmouth – less of a social hierarchy than in her old village. ‘You were accepted for who you were’ she said. Soon after moving into ‘Quaygate’ she received a visit from a Canon of the Cathedral, followed by the Chairman of the Cathedral Ladies. Shortly after, Mollie started as a regular worshipper at the Cathedral, became involved with the Cathedral groups and the week the gift and card shop opened she was one of the very first volunteers – a task she only relinquished a couple of years back.

Life was pretty much self-contained for the family in Old Portsmouth. In those days many more shops existed, including an excellent grocery shop on the corner where Balfour’s is today. However, it was much smaller because the left-hand side of the shop was the chemist’s run by Mr Price – almost next to Lloyd’s Bank. But in the early 1950’s, the Bank was operating from the building on the corner of High Street and Grand Parade, as the Lloyds Bank building had suffered war damage and had to be rebuilt.

Across the road on Cathedral Green, where the rose beds are today, stood more shops and a dwelling which somehow escaped the bombing. Allan’s the butchers, a greengrocer’s run by Mrs Glazier and Freeman’s barber’s shop did brisk trade – all to be demolished in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s.

Mollie had to walk down into Broad Street for stamps, postal orders or to send a parcel as the Post Office was then where Cobbles is today – run by Miss Smith and her brother. Later it moved across the road to Lucas’s (yacht chandlers) building, since developed as ‘Spinnaker Quay’. Its final destination was where Cubitt & West are now situated until it closed in January 2005.

Opposite Portsmouth’s Anglican Cathedral was the doctor’s surgery located in the home of Doctor Eddings and his wife Joan. Joan still lives in Old Portsmouth. The house with the purpose-built surgery was completed and opened in about 1953. Dr Eddings and his partner, Dr Whitwham, provided medical care to Old Portsmouth residents until the early 1980’s when Dr Eddings retired. Mollie’s two younger children often went out sailing with the Eddings family and no doubt had a thoroughly good time ‘messing about in boats’.

Back in Pembroke Road was the hairdresser’s called Barbara Villiers, run by Mrs Daphne Fisher, in the premises presently occupied by The Beauty Retreat. Mrs Fisher was a great character, kind hearted and a ‘larger than life’ person. In 1966 Popingays dress shop opened in the premises occupied by Mellors today. It was run by Mrs Beth Miller and young Sarah Linington (later Sarah Younghusband). Mollie told me she purchased several dresses there and no doubt also dropped in for coffee and a chat with friends as the shop also had a coffee shop and provided light lunches – it was the ‘in place’ to go for the ladies of Old Portsmouth on a Saturday morning. The shop closed in 1980/81 when it was taken over by Pamela Legge as an antique shop.

The Lemon Sole restaurant was previously a furrier’s which sold fur coats and provided an alteration and repair service. Dotted around Old Portsmouth were other retail premises including a grocer’s in Oyster Street, a bakery in Peacock Lane and, outside the present west doors of the Cathedral, a marine store dealer.

Jeremy and Sally, Mollie’s two youngest, attended the Garrison School in Cambridge Road, located in the building which is now the Armed Forces Recruiting Offices. Younger children were also provided for by Mrs Harrison who set up a kindergarten for pre-school children in a wooden hut behind the lodge Williamsgate in Pembroke Road.

One of the young family’s favourite walks was up to the then recently erected Nelson Statue in Pembroke Gardens. Jeremy enjoyed riding his tricycle around the path whilst Mollie met friends and would enjoy a chat on the seats which she said surrounded the statue in those days. The statue was relocated in 2005 to Grand Parade.

Mollie’s favourite local lunch venue is currently The Duke of Buckingham pub on the corner of High Street and Highbury Street. When she first lived across the road she looked out onto bombsites until the pub was rebuilt in 1969. The interesting ‘modernist’ house on the other corner was built by an architect, Mr ‘Andy’ Anderson as a home and business. Also in the High Street, where the three ultra-modern town houses were built in 2001, was Cambridge Garage run by the Bartlett family – very handy for the Colemans who bought a car there and could ‘fill up’ and get it repaired on the doorstep as well.

Eric, Mollie’s late husband, was at one time Chairman of FOOPA and later on Diana, one of their daughters, was also on the Committee. Diana remembers the FOOPA tennis tournaments played on grass courts next to where the bowls club is today. At the end of the season a supper for players was held in The Pembroke. After the tennis courts were closed the land was used for hockey and the ‘Southsea Ladies’ played on it.

If Mollie needed other than day to day items from the shops or, as we would put it now, some ‘retail therapy’, then a walk along to Palmerston Road, Southsea would bring her to Handley’s Department Store (now Debenham’s). It had a splendid restaurant and café where a pianist played, just the place to go for afternoon tea.

Mollie enjoyed recounting aspects of family life almost 50 years ago and, although her husband’s naval career took him away from Old Portsmouth for some time in the 1960’s, when Eric retired they both threw themselves wholeheartedly into the social life of Old Portsmouth.

(Mollie Coleman was talking to Jackie Baynes who compiled this narrative. Some names and details of shops were provided by Julian and Marnie Linington. Joan Eddings confirmed the surgery details. Thanks to everyone who gave their time to make this article possible).

In 1860 it was known as “Marine View Hotel” for Officers later renamed “Tufnell’s Private Hotel” after the owner. On the 10th September 1874, Edwardian Grand Parade looking towards Penny Street and Garrison ChurchMrs. Sarah Robinson purchased it to be used as a Soldiers’ Institute and Officers’ Home for the promotion of temperance beliefs. Besides support of the then Governor of Portsmouth and the Duke of Cambridge, Florence Nightingale assisted with £100 per year towards running costs for 5 years. In 1882 the Prince of Wales (later King Edward) visited. A large building was added in 1892 – currently the site of Old Harbour Mews – to accommodate Soldiers’ families, with the original reverting to the Officers’ House.

.In 1910, the total complex was renamed “The Soldiers and Sailors Help Society”, including sailors for the first time, with a final name change in 1940 to “The Prince’s Christian Home”. Between 1948 and 1958 it was used initially as a “Bonding Wine & Spirits Store” then “Sadlers and Co – Building Contractors” and from 1971, the YMCA. Modern Grand Parade and 106 – 109 Penny Street

Persimmion purchased the site in 1996 from owners Southern Electric, for the development of Old Harbour Mews. However, the original house remains as 106 and 108 Penny Street, a Grade II Listed building containing 2 very pleasantly proportioned and comfortable private homes.

The Square Tower at the top of Broad Street was built in 1494. This served as the residence for the Governor of Portsmouth but also had provision for guns to be mounted on the roof. This building was subsequently used for the storage of gunpowder and, in 1779, was converted for use as a meat store. In 1827, the tower was refaced in stone.

Henry VIII’s break with Rome resulted in the threat of invasion from both France and Spain and so, as well as commissioning a series of castles to protect the south coast, of which Southsea Castle was one, the town’s fortifications were strengthened. However, the town’s defences were still considered inadequate and in 1665 Charles II appointed Bernard de Gomme, a Dutch engineer, to put in hand a major programme to improve the fortifications and this work resulted in the defences achieving the form they held until they became redundant.

In the 19th century advances in ordnance with the introduction of rifled guns improved their range and accuracy and resulted in the Old Portsmouth defences becoming inadequate. A ring of forts along the crest of Portsdown Hill together with sea forts in the Solent were constructed and, in the 1870’s and 80’s, the major part of the Old Portsmouth fortifications was demolished. However, the seaward defences were retained to protect the harbour entrance.

Further changes in the way conflicts were conducted saw the Portsmouth Garrison being dissolved in 1960 and the remaining fortifications were acquired by Portsmouth City Council.  

Long Curtain & The Moat
 from Spur Redoubt, there is a tunnel which passes through Long Curtain and is reputed to be part of Nelson’s route when he embarked to board H.M.S. Victory prior the Battle of Trafalgar. Passing through the tunnel there is a ramp to the left leading to the top of Long Curtain and King’s Bastion or the path on the right runs through to Pembroke Road. By the end of this path, the cottage named Williamsgate was originally the guard house to King William’s Gate (1833) which stood at this point on the south-eastern side of the fortified town.
In St George’s Road, opposite the end of Warblington Street stands the Landport Gate which was the main entrance to Portsmouth from London and is at the north-east limit of the old town.