18.08.09 - One of the bastions in the old Roman outer walls at Portchester Castle - originally they were usually packed with earth and rubble, but did you guess what this one was used for in the twentieth century? The image link tag might have given you a clue, if you'd spotted it - and yes, this was once used by Portchester Cricket Club - when I played here in the 1970s, this bastion contained a sort of kit room at the bottom, a changing room with VERY low ceiling above that and a scoreboard at the top, where a couple of youngsters handles the "tins" (the metal rectangles with the numbers painted - usually white on a black background) and, if I remember correctly, some painted canvas number "loops" (more numbers, from 0 to 9, which would be drawn through slots, leaving just one row of them showing at a time, giving the score, etcetera).

The health and safety lot eventually put a stop to cricket inside the castle grounds, which is a great pity, but it was also thought that the cricketers took up too much of a public facility. And they wonder why our test players struggle? Sunday matches sometimes used to draw a crowd numbered in the hundreds, especially on a nice day - and admission was FREE! There's no pleasing some people ...