Sights of Portsmouth October 2020

 

Anne and I enjoyed a couple of nights at the Portsmouth Dockyard Premier Inn with easy access around Portsea Island to Pompey as the UK’s only island city is nick-named. It took 75 minutes to drive across Sussex to our hotel from Haywards Heath, past our Cathedral city of Chichester into Hampshire. This Premier Inn is on the so-called Gunwharf Quays in the shadow of the Spinnaker Tower (2005). In past ages ships arriving at the port handed in their ammunition here and took it out again as they returned to conflicts across the world. The figure of Nelson is prominent on Grand Parade.

A spinnaker is a type of sail that billows outward. On a recent visit to Portsmouth Anne and I ascended the 170 metre (560ft) Spinnakar Tower modelled on such a sail and capturing the maritime character of Portsmouth. It helps you view the comings and goings of ferries from France, Spain, Channel Islands and the Isle of Wight. As a vertigo sufferer I couldn’t bring myself to walk across the glass panel on the observation floor! I took the picture from the side looking down to earth through the tower’s construction beams.  

At Remembrancetide we especially turn to war memorials and few are as realistic as that of the City of Portsmouth in Guildhall Square. Historic England’s web review reads: ‘The memorial’s accomplished and animated sculpture, by Charles Sargeant Jagger, exemplifies that distinguished artist’s ability to evoke the physical reality of war’. With no less than 6000 from the city killed in the First World War - especially at the Battle of Jutland (1916) - the cenotaph was built to recall ‘those who in the glorious morning of their days for England’s sake lost all but England’s praise’.

Our stay in Portsmouth was a 5min walk from the ferry across to the former naval town of Gosport now home to the Royal Navy Submarine Museum. Crossing the ferry gave us excellent views of the large ships docked across the water in Portsmouth harbour and the marina which is part of an extensive redevelopment of Gosport harbour. There were some rather fine tower blocks in Gosport. The Royal Navy retains a presence in the town with up to 3,000 service personnel engaged in the Defence School of Marine Engineering and Air Engineering and Survival School. 

From the top of the Spinnaker Tower Anne and I caught sight of the now stationary HMS Victory exhibited in the Gunwharf Quay and, by contrast, the comings and goings from the Isle of Wight ferry terminal on the other side of the harbour. There are some fine memorials in Portsmouth. Besides the statue of Nelson we were struck by the monument honouring the expertise and courage of the navy’s bomb disposal team whose professionalism is world famous. The task of keeping the sea safe requires ongoing determination and sacrifice across the world.

On our visit to Portsmouth I dropped by to say a prayer in its spacious Cathedral whose Dean, Fr Anthony Cane, was a colleague years back in Chichester Diocesan support for parishes team. The ‘Cathedral of the Sea’ is a prominent Portsmouth landmark. Though only made a Cathedral in 1927 the Church was dedicated 1188. Its bell tower once served another purpose as lighthouse and lookout point for ships in the Channel. Nowadays it is eclipsed as landmark by the adjacent Spinnaker Tower. I was impressed by the immersion font (1991) with a 9th century Greek design under the tower at the heart of the Cross shaped church.

The sign beside Portsmouth Naval Memorial tells how it commemorates more than 24,500 Royal Navy personnel who died during the World Wars. ‘When a recruit joined the Royal Navy they were allocated to a ‘manning port’: Portsmouth, Plymouth or Chatham. After the end of the First World War the Imperial (now Commonwealth) Graves Commission built memorials at each of these ports with the names of their dead taking the form of an obelisk which served as a marker for ships entering the safety of the ports’.

Henry VIII made his mark on many and Portsmouth is no exception. In 1544 fearful of a French attack he commissioned Southsea Castle to command the deep water channels into the port. The work was completed in six months funded from the sale of monasteries which, with the break from the Pope, put England at odds with Catholic Europe. In the French invasion of 1545 King Henry had the indignity of losing his ship Mary Rose in the tumult. In 1982 this was raised from the sea bed and is now on display at Portsmouth’s Gunwharf. 300 years later fear of another French invasion led to the building of the so-called Palmerston forts encircling Portsmouth harbour.

The 9 foot statue of Queen Victoria was fashioned in 1903. Victoria ‘Regina et Imperatrix’ - Queen and Empress - ruled 1837-1901. Portsmouth was heavily engaged in that rule as a naval base at the height of the British Empire. At its zenith this empire covered 13 million square miles, around 20% of the earth's landmass and population. Portsmouth retains strong links with the British monarch through the heavy presence here of the Royal Navy. The lions opposite Victoria in front of the Guildhall symbolise both civic and national pride in a city from where Nelson sailed to Trafalgar 1805 and which facilitated the D-Day Landings in 1944.

Anne stands beside the fine statue of Charles Dickens in Portsmouth city centre. Dickens was born in Portsmouth 1812 where there is a commemorative museum. Writer and social critic he is seen as one of the greatest English novelists and is read to this day. He has been praised for his truth telling, sense of humour, his prose and the way his writings engaged with the scandal of dire poverty in the Victorian era. So captivating were his writings that thousands of poor people would individually pay a halfpenny to have his writings read to them which encouraged the growth of literacy. 

The laughing sailor who rolls in merriment for 20p (originally 1d = 0.5p) was a memorable experience on our visit to Portsmouth Museum which has a good record of beach entertainments like the hall of mirrors. We enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes exhibition exploring the legacy of Holmes’ creator Arthur Conan Doyle who lived and worked in Portsmouth. There are reconstructions of a 17th century bedchamber, an 1871 dockyard worker’s kitchen, a Victorian parlour, a 1930s kitchen and I found myself much at home in the 1950s living room with the child lying down on the carpet entranced by the novelty of television. 

Anne and I enjoyed our first visit to a ‘Brewpub’ near Portsmouth Guildhall in which the pub has its own microbrewery providing short courses on brewing beer. As you can see I had less time for a course than for a beer and it was really good. Around the corner is the Queen Elizabeth Fountain presented to Portsmouth to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 and unveiled by her cousin, statesman and naval officer, Earl Louis Mountbatten. Two years later Mountbatten was assassinated by a bomb hidden aboard his fishing boat in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, Ireland, by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.