From the North Foreland to Penzance

by Clive Holland

The privilege of holding a market at Gosport was granted to the village by the Bishop of Winchester, who, however, was not entirely disinterested in the matter, as he received the tolls of the old market house. The latter was of wood, and was an interesting building containing in its upper story some apartments which served as offices for the bishop’s baronial court. Unfortunately the old place shared the fate of many other interesting survivals from medieval times in the neighbourhood, and was pulled down in the year 1811, when a more commodious market house was erected nearer the shore.

Portsea, which lies to the north of the railway and Portsmouth Harbour station with Portsea Island, which but for a narrow channel or waterway would be a peninsula, has for centuries been an interesting and important portion of the district nowadays known generally as Portsmouth. Its interest, however, has in the past, as now, been chiefly of a maritime nature. It does not appear to have had any very great importance on account of its trade at any period of its history. But almost from time immemorial fleets have assembled here before setting forth upon expeditions; and hither they have returned, often battered, though generally victorious. Here also armies have foregathered for foreign service, and have returned “from the Wars.” But Portsea never seems to have ranked with Southampton as a mercantile port; it has always been more of a naval and military establishment. Even in ancient times its position must have commended itself to strategists, for in those days it must have been practically impregnable, except at one or two points, by reason of the fact that it was surrounded by water, and the mud and marshland which lay along its shores rendered landing by an enemy extremely difficult, if not impossible, and the approach of craft of any size impracticable, except here and there where the shore was hard, or there was a sandy beach.

Even the Romans appear not to have invaded Portsea Island, for there are no relics of their occupation discoverable upon it. Its slightly elevated plateau was, however, admirably adapted for use as a camp and for the assemblage of armies, and it is doubtless to this fact that the town largely owed its foundation. In Saxon times it was a Royal demesne, but ultimately was given by Alfreda, Queen of Ethelred, and, strange as this may appear, aunt and military teacher of Alfred the Great, to the church at Winchester.

At the suppression of the religious foundations in the reign of Henry VIII it was given to the College of Winchester, into whose possession the greater portion of the land on which Portsea was built, as well as the advowsons of the churches on the island, passed.

Since then, as every one knows, it has become one of the most important sections of the naval and military Portsmouth of to-day.

The mere mention of the latter town, with its many and crowded memories of the past, seems to bear with it a taste of salt air and the invigorating quality of a sea breeze, and there seems little doubt but that the Danes harried Portsmouth on several occasions, as they did most south coast towns of any consequence. And it is also equally probable that it was here that some at least of the galleys with which Alfred the Great formed the nucleus of the English navy were built, and that they sallied forth through the narrow harbour mouth to inflict the crushing defeat upon the marauders in the Solent, which constituted one of the most important of the many naval battles that Alfred fought.

It was near Portsmouth, too, that Harold II’s fleet two centuries later cruised aimlessly about for some time ere sailing northward with the object of preventing the landing of William of Normandy, which took place eastward further up the coast; and it was here, in 1139, that Matilda, daughter of Henry I, landed with a handful of knights, and a few serving men, to attempt to win the English throne; and Portsmouth was also the place of departure for Richard Cœur de Lion on his final expedition to the Holy Land.

Indeed, almost every foot of ground upon which the older portion of the town now stands is pregnant with historic events, and memories of the England of the past which, from the dim ages when Portsmouth began to take shape, has been ever great, upon the narrow and wider seas, save for a short period in the reign of that pleasure-loving monarch, Charles II, when the Dutch swept the Channel.

As one walks its streets memories come to one of the innumerable gallant men—many unsung in ballad and unrecorded in the pages of history, though deserving both honours—who during the past centuries have set forth boldly upon enterprises for the preservation of Britain’s empire of the sea and the maintenance of her honour and glory afloat.

There is the famous “Hard.” Who that has read Marryat’s Peter Simple does not know it, and cannot in his mind’s eye conjure up the picture of the famous place with the pig-tailed “salts” who frequented it in Nelson’s, and Howe’s, and Rodney’s times?