Portsmouth England United Kingdom UK History
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PORTSEA -Gallery 1
The first genuine "suburb" of Old Portsmouth - originally considered by its residents as a town in its own right
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Treadgold's was a traditional ironmongery, which opened in 1809 and contuned trading until the death of the last William Treadgold in 1882. From then it continued to be run by a manager appointed by his widow.

Following her death in 1901 Treadgold, Ironmongers of Portsea, became a limited company with the six Treadgold children as major shareholders and continued until final closure in 1988, when it was bought by Hampshire County Council, to be turned into a museum that opened briefly in 1995.

 

Arguably the world's finest engineer - certainly of his day - Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born in Portsea on 9 April 1806.

His father, Marc Brunel, was a French emigre, who after a period in the USA, came to Portsmouth to supervise the building of the world's first mass production line, making ship's blocks for the Royal Navy.

 
The two main sources of employment for people in Portsea were the dockyard and, later in the 19th century, Brickwoods Brewery.
 

Portsea is part of the parish of St Mary, but that meant a long walk for the local residents, when they had to attend their regular church services in Fratton.

Eventually, tiring of the effort, especially during the winter months, they set about raising the funds to build their own church, and St George's was opened in 1754.

The railway came to Portsea in 1876, with the opening of Portsmouth Harbour Station, on a pierhead that stretched out over the water, to allow for a ferry link.
 

One effect of the Napoleonic Wars was the spiralling price of flour and bread, which led to the dockyard employees forming a co-operative society, for the purposes of building their own mill, on a site known as Pesthouse Fields, in Portsea.

Building work began either in late 1796, or early the following year and the mill was working by 1799; so successful was the enterprise that the local bakers were able to undercut other competition by up to tuppence a loaf.

However, with the intended expansion of the dockyard, the mill was bought up by the Board of Ordnance, despite petitions from the locals; the expansion plans were then temporarily halted and the Board began leasing the mill to various millers, including Edward and Peter Houghton - the last known lessee was James Dennison, in 1856, but the mill was finally demolished in 1868, when the dockyard was indeed extended over the site.

 
George Sutton Titheradge (1848-1916), actor, was born on 9 December 1848 and became a well known actor throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
 

By the early 20th century, much of Portsea's housing was starting to pay for the haste in which it had originally been built, and the lack of earlier planning regulation meant that there were many gloomy little enclaves, as can be seen left and in Blossom Alley, above.

In the 1920s, a woman murdered in Blossom Alley, was found to have been living in a two-roomed hovel, with a ladder the only access to the

bedroom upstairs. The only door to the "house" opened directly onto a tiny courtyard, where three outside toilets were shared by the five houses that opened into the area, where outside stand taps were also shared by the residents.

In 1911, White's Row, an awful slum, was demolished and the first council houses were built in a street named after Admiral Curzon Howe, but the coming of the first world war then delayed further much needed improvements.

In the 1920s, the council finally started demolishing more of the old houses, including the terrible Blossom Alley and residents were rehoused in flats in Cumberland Street, but houses such as those shown on the right survived well into the 1930s and some even to the post World War II era.

 
 

During the second world war, Portsea, being so close to the dockyard, suffered severe bomb damage and terrible civilian casualties, but if there was anything to be thankful for it was the fact that the majority of bomb damage was inflicted upon the oldest houses, and when the war ended, the council began redeveloping the whole area.

From the early 1950s, up until the early 1970s, the improvements continued and finally Queen Street, shown here on the left, in the 1950s, was widened, bringing a completely different "feel" to the entire area.

The redevelopment programme slowed a little towards the end of the seventies, but in the 21st century it has picked up again, with a new complex of flats, Admiralty Quarter, being built in Queen Street.

Sir John Brickwood (right) was head of the Brickwoods Brewery, one of the main employers in Portsea from the nineteenth century until 1974, when it was sold to Whitbreads, and eventually closed down altogether in 1983.

Sir John, who was born in 1852 and died in 1932, was the main founder of Portsmouth Football Club in 1898 and was ever active in local life, even when he was a very old man.

When he died, his son, Sir Rupert Redvers Brickwood, succeeded him as second baronet in the Brickwoods Baronetcy of Portsmouth, and was in turn succeeded, in 1974, by Sir Basil Graeme Brickwood, who died in 2006.

 
LOTS MORE TO COME FROM PORTSEA VERY SOON ...
 
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