Portsmouth and Southsea

Man Overboard

Old Portsmouth and Spice Island from the Spinnaker Tower, St Thomas's Cathedral and the High Street left of centre, above the Isle of Wight Ferry.

In 1513 King Henry VIII had a hit with the song Pastime with Good Company. It had a catchy tune, and was performed widely. Evidence of its popularity lay for centuries in the hulk of the Mary Rose, and now is on display in the eerie new exhibition centre in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

Pastime with good company

I love and shall until I die

grudge who lust but none deny

so God be pleased thus live will I

Remnants of the band on the Mary Rose

Thus, perhaps, will live I, with good company, and no denial, but the Mary Rose was a war ship, and the story of Portsmouth is inextricably linked to the navy, and warfare.

Long before the wreck of the Mary Rose was discovered, I surfaced from the waves of childbirth somewhere by the Southsea Canoe Lake (even though the Italian authorities would later insist I was born in Southsea Castle!) my nautical, naval and warfare connections pretty tenuous at that stage....

Somewhere here there should be a blue plaque......

My father, at the time, taught at Portsmouth Grammar School, 

and we lived just down the High Street, on the top storey of Number 16.

No 16, circa 1985

Portsmouth had for hundreds of years been a densely populated city, with courts and alleys in the area around the naval dockyards (Portsea) packed with tenements lacking running water or sanitation.  

The Dockyards: HMS Warrior in the foreground, Victory and the Mary Rose Exhibition Centre above

The writer Walter Besant, who was born here in 1836, recalled the scenes along the Hard:  The Royal Frederick had been paid off that morning and a thousand Jack Tars were all together chucking away the money in a few days which it had taken three years to earn..... There was a tradition that being ashore meant drink as long as the money lasted.  It sometimes lasted a week, or even a fortnight, and was sometimes got through in a day or two.  There were harpies and pirates in every house which was open to Jack.....

“scarey night!”

Reviewed 12 April 2014

booked into this hotel because i remembered it fondly from when i used to live in portsmouth, it used to be a very nice place to eat. my god how things have changed.

my husband was quite appalled at the exterior of the hotel. things did not improve on the inside. we had booked 2 rooms for 2 nights, which we very quickly changed. the carpets were threadbare, the walls were filthy, the wallpaper was peeling off, the ceiling was falling down in places and that was just on the stairs

At the beginning of the twentieth century Southampton Row was 627 feet long and seven and a half feet wide; King's Bench Alley was 586 feet long with an average width of three to four feet. Portsmouth is the only city in the UK on an island, and is also the lowest above sea level  - global warming will turn Portsmouth into first a Venice and then a memory - but in the meantime, when in 1918 there were 23,000 men working in the dockyards, reformers and inspectors were busy with improvements.  In 1927, at Number 9, Blossom Alley, a family of ten lived in three rooms, the largest of which measured 13ft 6ins x 10ft x 6ft 8 inches.  Of course that was luxury compared to conditions on the ships: at the time of the battle of Trafalgar about 800 men lived on HMS Victory.....

And HMS Warrior (1860) was not much better,

Though Officers and Gentlemen lived in a slightly different world:

And if you were Admiral Nelson, you had the very best:

Even if he did have to sleep with a canon at the foot of his bed!

Portsmouth is still an important working dockyard, and there is a constant traffic of warships, supply vessels, and, in the background, ferries.

And local artists still cater for the flow of sailors, with their questions of identity.....

Across the island, past the War Memorial, past the D Day museum, past Henry VIII's Southsea Castle, at Eastney, there are the Barracks of the Royal Marines (which for years I believed was a project one of my forebears had a hand in, though I can no longer find the evidence.....)

Where a museum now inhabits the Officers' Mess.

War, whether Napoleonic, Crimean, World, Cold, or Falklands, has been part of the business of Portsmouth, since whenever.  As a child I remember my mother producing her ration book in the butcher's; we played in air raid shelters and bomb sites.  Much of the High Street had been smashed, families crushed and burnt in the rubble, the nave of the Royal Garrison Church still stands roofless since a fire bombing raid in 1941. The Cathedral, dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury, was only completed in 1991, as plans to extend it, following the creation of the diocese in 1927, were halted during World War II.  

As a child I remember sitting on my mother's lap during incomprehensible sermons, the temporary brick wall behind me of more interest than the liturgy. But then, with David Stancliffe as Dean, the west front, with its towers and rose window, was consecrated in the presence of the Queen Mother in November 1991.

I remember, or imagine I remember, tottering on the roof outside our flat, my mother hanging washing, while grey ships hooted their way in and out of the channels. I can see my mother laughing with a Russian sailor as he showed us round his cramped quarters. On 18 April 1956, the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze, in company with the destroyers Sovershenny and Smotryaschy, had arrived at Portsmouth Naval Base and berthed on South Railway Jetty. This is the VIP berth immediately in front of the distinctive Semaphore Tower. Ordzhonikidze carried the Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev and Premier Nikolai Bulganin for talks in London with the Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden.  The following day the public was allowed to board at least one of these ships, and, possibly at the very same time, war hero Commander Lionel 'Buster' Crabb, who had stayed the night at the Sally Port Hotel under the name of Smith, slipped into the waters of oblivion somewhere beneath us.

Family and friends (Molly and Freddie Howe) on the Camber
in the mid '50s

Fourteen months later a headless and handless body was found in Chichester Harbour, wearing the same wet suit that Crabb favoured.  The bodied was identified, and subsequently buried, as Crabb's.

Theories, at the time and since, have been broadcast, though official documents are not due to be released until 2057.  One of the most interesting accounts is that of novelist Tim Binding, contemporary and friend of my elder brother, in Man Overboard, which was published in 2005.  Subsequently Tim wrote that he had met Sydney Knowles, the man who was called to identify Crabb's body, who claimed that Crabb had been about to defect to Russia and so MI5 had rigged the events in Portsmouth Harbour and killed him.

Delightful Brutalism - a derelict building in Southsea

On February 7th this year, which would have been Charles Dickens's 202nd birthday, the first full scale statue of the author in Britain was unveiled in Guildhall Square, Portsmouth, not very far from his birthplace museum.  Dickens did not stay long, nor for that matter did Peter Sellers, another famous Portmuthian.  But if my experience is anything to go by, those first salty breaths, the toddling steps in earshot of the sea, the press of history combined with the holiday air that scuds across the shingle and round the shelters along the esplanade, all remain ingrained in the soul, engraved on the cortex, imprinted on the heart.  The bric-a-brac of first impressions must help shape the soul?

Me and Fiona Reid, Ladies Mile, 1952

We moved from the High Street to Drayton, up the hill on the mainland, and then away all together, but I still remember the trolley buses in the town centre, the butcher's St Bernard, and the tiger skin on our dentist's waiting room floor.  I can also recall my father being launched in a glider on the playing fields, a team of boys running with the rope, and the ultimate child's toy, a Link Trainer, somewhere within the darkness of the school. Years later, a teenager, I returned to stay with my godmother, and wandered into a nightclub in Eastney to hear Victor Brox.  The streets then were all in black and white, and somehow the grey sea seemed to be leaking into my mind.

Later still, in the 80s, Amanda and I returned to arrange our wedding with the Dean of Portsmouth, who had become a friend.  Around the same time I witnessed a diminutive coffin being nailed shut in the cathedral crypt.  It was the coffin of a sailor from the Mary Rose, chosen, I believe, to symbolise all those who died.  Also present was a descendant of that sailor.

I've been back on other occasions - taking one of my daughters to see the dockyard, passing through to the Isle of Wight, visiting the Mary Rose, but I have no contacts there now.  The war did its damage, but so much more has changed since then.  Shopping at Gunwharf Quays is the attraction now, with the bold landmark of the Spinnaker Tower,

the University populates the boarding houses with students, the Mighty Mouse is a rusty shadow of its former self.

The Pier is closed, awaiting a millionaire to restore it, or perhaps the arsonist's kiss.

There is something about the British seaside.  On a good day it can shimmer with the abandoned fun of escaping from the daily grind.  But it is not what it once was.  It is not really well.  Rust persists through the thick paint while weeds push up through the cracks in the pavements.  Henry VIII may have enjoyed sunbathing on top of Southsea Castle, strumming his lute and warbling one of his hits, but even the stones of that hefty building seem tired today.

Where did the time go?

On my recent visit I purchased a Captain's Boarding Pass to the Historic Dockyard, which entitles me to many benefits (though curiously would not get me in to the Royal Marines Museum) and would readmit me at any time for two years.  

However, though I feel that, in a strange way, Portsmouth and Southsea are a part of me, I guess that I am no longer part of them, and I am not sure I will ever go back now.  Truth is, despite the pastime, or the times passed, with good company, I am now more of a man overboard.  As Henry VIII sang:

youth must have some dalliance

of good or ill some pastance

Company methinks then best

all thoughts and fancies to digest

The door is firmly closed.....

Berkhamsted, Herts

A small town in Hertfordshire

In one sense The Rex is the most appropriate name for one of Berkhamsted's best known attractions, as it was in Berkhamsted in 1066 that William the Conqueror, after his success at the Battle of Hastings, accepted the crown of England from the Saxon lords. He then proceeded to London where he was enthroned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day.

Subsequently, as King William I, he built up the castle, which later became the favourite home of the Black Prince, son of Edward III, in the fourteenth century. It was also associated with Geoffrey Chaucer, who was Clerk of Works, and Thomas Becket, who was at one time the Constable of the Castle. It is now a ruin, with much of the masonry and all the timber stripped out centuries ago for other building projects, but it still makes a fine sight from the railway line, as travellers zip past between London and Birmingham (and they won't see this from HS2!)

The Church of St Peter the Great was not always the Parish Church - St Mary's, Northchurch, where my grandmother's needlework is still evident in the Mothers' Union Flag, used to hold that accolade.  But St Peter's, one of the largest Parish Churches in Hertfordshire, has held the position for many years now.  I remember attending my first funeral there, that of Miss Benham, who was for three years the complete school experience for me.  Her coffin was miniscule and even though I was barely a teenager I felt a distinct sense of loss, as I imagined the black and white etching of a dove that represented Jesus' soul in her dim and tiny parlour;  she was high among the clouds, and death seemed a very strange thing at that time.

 

Berkhamsted, however you spell it - the local historian Percy C Birtchnell (whose Men's Outfitter's shop collapsed suddenly a few years ago) quoted 50 different spellings collected by an earlier historian (though neither of them had my daughters' version, Burp Hamster), has ancient roots, as there is evidence of human life around here at least 5,000 years ago, and the Romans drove a highway through the valley 2,000 years ago. The name actually refers to the birch-grown hamstead but, with the exception of the castle and one or two other buildings, the earliest remaining constructions now are medieval, and the house of Dean Incent, founder of Berkhamsted School, is a prime example of timber frame vernacular architecture.

  

The Court House is another example of Tudor construction, even though it has been extensively restored in recent times. It used to be the office of the Ale Taster, but now it serves as an adjunct to the church and families can grieve together there over a glass of wine or cup or tea following a funeral, or the Women's Institute may hold lectures there.

In the days when these buildings were still relatively young, the poet William Cowper, best known for his Diverting History of John Gilpin, though some of his Olney Hymns are also well known (God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform) grew up here, son of the rector of Berkhamsted. He may be due a revival, as his poems and letters show attention to the natural world that fit with modern sensitivities. As John Betjeman wrote, Every winter I read The Task by William Cowper, and twice or thrice those wonderful books in it where he describes a Winter Evening, a Winter Morning and a Winter Walk at Noon...... Cowper's magic power of description gives an eternal look to the cold and sparkling scene.......

Another local celebrity, commemorated in St Mary's Northchurch, was Peter the Wild Boy, who was brought from his birthplace near Hanover in 1724 by Queen Caroline, and granted a royal pension. He never learned to speak and lived on a farm, roaming the woods and fields until his death in 1785.

In the Elizabethan age the seat of power moved from the rickety castle to Berkhamsted Place, on the highest point to the North of the town. This house was a typical unfortified residence for wealthy landowners, and it stood the ravages of time until shortly after I took this photo (below) about 45 years ago or so. I remember entering the spooky and derelict shell (no health and safety signs then) and venturing to explore, but actually found little of interest as anything of any value had long since been extracted and recycled.

  

 

The Roman road through the valley of the Bulbourne, a trickle today but once powerful enough to erode the Chiltern Chalk to create the valley and strong enough in earlier time to power two mills in the town, brought trade and drovers and troops and so on and so forth through the town. For many years before the railways there were horse-drawn coaches heading north-west from London and stopping for refreshment at the Crown, the Swan or the King's Arms. While I never saw a horse in one of them (no horse walked into the bar while I was there) the King's Arms was the home of the Marjorie Behren's School of Dance, where I was driven to attempt to learn to strip the willow or prance in the manner of Sir Roger de Coverley (Julia, forgive me!)

In the Swan we funded Peter Anthony Caro's gambling habits for many years, quaffing mugs of thin beer which went from one shilling and eight pence to thirteen new pence per pint at decimalisation (not too far off a 100% rise).  For years our party included Richard Mabey, and sometimes his brother David, the brothers Robertson (one an orchid specialist the other an artist with a liking for birds), and sometimes the novelist Tim Binding, who for a while lived only a short step away along the high street above an ironmongers.  It was a convivial environment, even though Mr Caro's wife, Paula, oftentimes seemed care worn or brow beaten, but it was preferable to many of the other hostelries along the strip, including the Crown next door, which tended to be full of drunken newsreaders and disgruntled school teachers, or the King's Arms where a Hemel Hempstead kiss would result in a visit to West Herts A and E.

  

The Town Hall, built in 1859, was for years the market hall, but then became a pub, on the ground floor, but with an atmosphere like that of a railway terminus, it did not trade well. Now Carluccio with his southern charm has taken on the pavement, and provides those well known Italian treats, skinny lattes, as froth on the daydream for the nouveau Berkhamstedians.

It is really quite strange to have known a place so long.  Nowadays I walk down the High Street and wonder why so many people are sitting in the Gas Showroom in the evening, before remembering that it is now a refined eating place.  And where my friends the Manders lived and worked a hardware store the post office has taken over, vacating the smooth brick building where I worked for the Christmas posts and we bought our stamps. 

Berkhamsted was blessed with schools from an early era, well before compulsory education or Mr Gove. Ashlyns School was originally the Foundling Hospital, relocated here from Coram's Field in London. The Boys' School, founded in the sixteenth century by Dean Incent,

was my alma mater, and my dad's (who was himself brought up in School House, Northchurch, where his father was the Headmaster as well as being Organist and Choir Master of St Mary's). School House Berkhamsted was the home of the young Graham Greene (and his brother Hugh Carlton). It was, for fifteen years, also my home, and I can claim the indistinguishment of having refused to open the front door to the Messrs Greene one fine day in the twentieth century when I saw the tall and tweedy brothers swaying across the graveyard towards our front door. I still do not know what overcame me, but I missed the opportunity to be able to say I met Graham Greene because something inside me said, don't let him in - don't let him taint you.... So to this day you ask me about Graham Greene and my story is I didn't let him in his own/my house.....

However the school, and Graham Greene, have been good for the town. We used to have visitors from all over the world wanting to see the green baize door, and nowadays there is the annual Graham Greene festival. Norman Sherry, also my professor at University, strutted around researching his three volume biography of the author, and Greene himself set much of The Human Factor here.

Other Old Boys include the composer and musicologist Anthony Hopkins (for 36 years presenter of the BBC radio programme Talking about Music), who until he died, aged 93, in May 2014 lived on the common with his young bride; and Robin Knox-Johnson, circumnavigator extraordinary.

In the First World War, Lord Kitchener, he of the recruiting posters no less, had a camp here by the town, where later kids like me would toboggan in the winter, eroding the grassy surface of the chalk hills much more than the war effort ever did. Ironically, in a way, my grandfather, later to return here to settle, was one of the recruits who spent a short while here in training, before being packaged off to the slaughter. In recent years an extensive practice trench system has been rediscovered at the top of New Road.

Kitchener's Field

Berkhamsted is perhaps an unremarkable place - the bypass cements that concept - it is a by-water now - but it has had a distinguished past and is an attractive and convenient town to commuters and celebrities of varying kinds.  Not many now will remember Harry Worth, but he lived here and would occasionally be seen re-enacting his signature mirror trick at shop entrances.  Roger Moore, the eyebrow 007, seems to have been an inhabitant, though that would be a secret.  One of Basil Brush's stooges was a local boy; Reg Butler, a foremost sculptor in his day, lived up near where Berkhamsted Place stood; one of the first famous presenters of breakfast television, Nick Owen, grew up and lived with his family here (and some say Esther Rantzen was also here); the artists Brian Bennett and Harry Sheldon are local residents; Lady Clementine Spencer Churchill lived here and attended the girls' school, then in the High Street (which building became the National Provincial Bank when the school moved up King's Road). Slightly more recently Sarah Brightman was raised here and attended the Arts Educational School in nearby Tring Park (and may have married my old mate Malcolm 'Puke' Abbott, though this may have been just a drunken dream).  It is also the home of Ed Reardon, eponymous anti-hero of the Radio 4 series Ed Reardon's Week, which celebrates much of the attraction of the locality.

Although industry may not present itself as the raison d'etre for this modest (population c.16,000) town the Duke of Bridgewater, who lived at Ashridge a few miles up the Chilterns from the valley, brought the Grand Junction (now Grand Union) Canal through here and for a hundred years or so the traffic of barges was incessant (as a boy I remember a pair of working barges passing at least every half hour).  In 1852, William Cooper (from Clunbury in Shropshire, hence the Clunbury Press in Manor Street) started a small factory in Raven's Lane and perfected the world's first Sheep Dip, using sulphur and arsenic, brought in on the canal. Later the business expanded and at its peak produced most of the fly sprays and insecticides in the post war period.  The works finally closed about twenty years ago.

Being a bargee was thirsty work, and Berkhamsted had plenty of pubs to match demand.  One of the best is The Rising Sun, pictured above in the 1960s and below in 2013.  As an apprentice drinker I enjoyed this rough but homely establishment and was grateful that Madge never challenged me for ID.  Now I am happy to drop in from time to time (when it is not too family full!) to taste one of the real ales on tap, or to share the free snacks on a Friday evening.

The canal is still used, but it is busiest in the summer with holiday cruisers; a sign of the times, but a living memorial to a great period in our past. With the railway, the A41 and the canal towpath Berkhamsted is well connected, and in many ways represents the various stages of the history of our land.

The Rex is one good reason to visit Berkhamsted, as it is not only a wonderful art deco cinema, almost exactly as it was in its heyday some sixty years ago, with shell uplights and red plush, but it is also a superbly run modern establishment, showing great films with the possibility of enjoying a drink at the same time. 

It was not the only cinema in the High Street, however, as the Court (in Graham Greene's time, The New Cinema) was popular in my youth. I well remember seeing Tommy Steele in Tommy the Toreador in 1959 and walking out into a pea-souper fog so thick that we all had to hold hands to walk home. They don't make films like that nowadays, nor do we have fogs like that. Mysteriously the Court Cinema burned down and has been replaced by Tesco's.....

"There is mercy in ev'ry place,

And mercy, encouraging thought!

Gives even affliction a grace,

And reconciles man to his lot."

William Cowper 

Verses, supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk, during his solitary abode in the island of Juan Fernandez, 1782.

Stalwart  citizens...  a certain reunion in the King's Arms

Photo by Joe Harris

http://therexberkhamsted.com/

http://theriser.net/

http://www.grahamgreenefestival.org/Pages/festival2013.php

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/06/antony-hopkins