A lifetime of Islands: Hampshire

Showing posts with label Hampshire. Show all posts

Monday, 26 March 2012

Island 161 - Horsea, Hampshire

Horsea Island is located in Portsmouth Harbour to the south of Paulsgrove and the M27 motorway.

Horsea was originally 2 islands - Great and Little Horsea. The islands were joined in 1889 when a torpedo testing lake was constructed. In the early 1970s the tidal mudflats between the island and the mainland at Paulsgrove were reclaimed, so Horsea is really no longer an island. Some of the reclaimed area became a landfill site and the rest was developed as Port Solent. Port Solent is a marina, housing, cinema and retail complex. Most of the original island is inaccessible, as it is part of the naval base HMS Excellent.

Horsea Island

These geese want to know where the sea has gone!

They are standing on the area, which was previously tidal mudflats

Entrance to HMS Excellent base - end of the road for civilians

HMS Excellent from the island's only 'hill'

Posh flats at Port Solent

Port Solent

Portchester Castle from HMS Excellent boundary

Wednesday, 4 May 2011

Island 90 - Hayling, Hampshire

Hayling Island is located 2 miles south of the town of Havant. It is joined to the mainland by Langstone Bridge. The island is 3.5 miles long by 4.5 miles wide at the south end but at its narrowest point it is only half a mile wide. I was surprised to find farmland on the island, as I was expecting it to be more built up.

Langstone Bridge and salt marsh in the mist from the road to the east near the Langstone Hotel

Hayling has been occupied since the Stone Age. The Romans built a temple there and it was farmed by the Anglo-Saxons. After 1066 William the Conqueror granted South Hayling Manor, which covered most of the island, to the French Benedictine Abbey of Jumieges. They owned it until 1415. The production of salt from seawater is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. Hundreds of acres of land were lost to the sea in a great flood in the first half of the 14^th century. In 1579 South Hayling Manor became the property of the Dukes of Norfok. They owned it until 1825 when they sold it to a William Padwick.

In 1824 a toll bridge opened. There were plans to develop Hayling Island into a resort but only the Grand Crescent and Royal Hotel were built at this stage. In 1865 a railway branch line from Havant was built to Langstone and this was extended in 1867 to South Hayling.

Before the construction of the toll bridge, Hayling was only accessible by boat or at low tide from Langstone via a footpath known as the Wadeway. Some of the wooden posts, which marked the route can still be seen at low tide.

St Peter's Church at Northney

Princess Catherine Yurievskaya/Yourievsky is buried in St Peter's churchyard. She was the daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. She was born in St Petersburg in 1878 but fled to France with her mother after her father was assassinated in 1881. She lived on Hayling Island from 1932 until her death in 1959.

There is a large ancient yew tree in the churchyard of St Mary's Church, which is 1,000-2,000 years old and has a girth of 9 metres.


Norfolk Crescent, South Hayling This should be Hayling's best architectural feature but all the houses are divided into flats or bedsits and it all looks very dilapidated and sorry for itself, which is a great shame.

Former Royal Hotel at South Hayling

It has been restored to its former glory and is now luxury apartments.

From the 1930s the island was developed as a resort. Houses, a cinema, funfair and holiday camp were built.

Hayling Seaside Railway and Funfair at South Hayling
The light railway runs along the seafront for about a mile between Beachlands and Eastoke

Beach huts at South Hayling
There are 3 miles of shingle beach along the south coast of the island

After the Second World War more houses and schools were built. The wooden bridge was replaced in 1965 by the current concrete one and the railway line closed in 1963, as the cost of replacing the wooden railway bridge was prohibitively high. The line is now the Hayling Billy Trail for walkers and cyclists and the former goods shed is a theatre.

Old Station Theatre

During the Second World War Sinah Common was used as a decoy or Starfish (the name came from the original term Special Fire) site to lure bombers away from Portsmouth. In 1943 some of the Mulberry Harbours used for the D-Day Landings were built around the island.

Ammunition Store at Sinah Common

Anti-aircraft gun implacement at Sinah Common

Houseboats at Sinah Common looking east

Golf Club on the far side of Sinah Lake

The end of the old railway line and the current Langstone Bridge

Hayling Lifeboat Station at Sandy Point

Sandy Point is a nature reserve and SSSI in the south east corner of the island. It is an area of rare maritime heathland, grassland and sand dunes. It is an important site for migrating birds and the Dartford warbler breeds there. It was formerly part of the grounds of Lord Mayor Treloar Hospital, which opened on Hayling Island in 1919 and which treated TB patients and later children with mental health problems. The hospital was demolished in 1988 and the site was taken over by Hampshire County Council.

Windsurfing was invented on Hayling Island in 1958 by Peter Chilvers.

Monday, 14 March 2011

Island 33 - Portsea

A large part of the City of Portsmouth is located on Portsea Island. The island is 4 miles from north to south, by 3.5 miles from east to west at its widest point.  It is linked to the mainland of Hampshire to the north by bridges carrying two main roads and a railway line. To the south is The Solent, to the east is Langstone Harbour and Portsmouth Harbour lies to the west. A Royal Naval Base and Dockyard occupy part of the western shore of the island and the suburb of Southsea is located at the southern end of the island.

Portsmouth was possibly founded in 1180 by a local merchant called Jean de Gisors. In 1194 King Richard I recognised the strategic location of Portsea Island and granted the town a charter, a fair and a market. The naval dockyard was built c1495 on the orders of Henry VII, although the town had been used as a naval base before this date. The dockyard was extended by Henry VIII in 1527 and in 1544 he built Southsea Castle on the south coast of the island.   The naval base grew in size and importance over the next four centuries.

The city of Portsmouth expanded across the island during the 19th Century, engulfing surrounding villages such as Buckland, Fratton and Stramshaw. In the 1870s the working class suburb of Somerstown was constructed on land previously owned by a Mr Somers.

The seaside resort of Southsea started to develop in the early 19th century. It was originally called Croxton Town after a local landowner called Thomas Croxton. It is now a suburb of Portsmouth. South Parade Pier opened in 1879 as a pleasure pier. It was closed in 2012 due to health and safety concerns and its future remains uncertain.

Southsea Common is a large public open space at the west end of Southsea. It wasn't developed for housing during the Victorian period, as the military needed a clear line of fire at any enemy ships. The common was purchased by Portsmouth City Council from the War Office in 1922 for use as a public park. A large number of mature elm trees are growing on the common, having escaped Dutch elm disease due to their isolation. Most of them are Huntingdon Elms, which were planted in the 1920s but there is also a Siberian Elm. Many trees were lost during the Great Storm of 1987 and these have been replaced by a Dutch cultivar called Lobel.

Portsmouth was bombed extensively during the Second World War. After the war bomb damaged housing was rebuilt and at the same time slum clearance was carried out. In 2011 the population of Portsmouth (including the parts to the north, which are on the mainland), was 205,100.

I visited Portsea Island for the first time in 1984 when I attended a Navy Day. We also visited the Henry VIII’s battleship Mary Rose, which was launched in 1511 and sank off Portsmouth in 1545.

Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory (and the ship on which he died at the Battle of Trafalgar) and HMS Warrior, (the world’s first iron-hulled armoured warship powered by both steam and sail and launched in 1860) can also be seen and visited in Portsmouth Harbour.

The most recent landmark is the Spinnaker Tower at Gunwharf Quays. It is 170 metres high and has 3 viewing decks and a café. Planning for it started in 1995, construction started in 2001 but it wasn’t finished until 2005. It is the centrepiece for the redevelopment of Portsmouth Harbour.

Clarence Pier at the northern end of Southsea Common was opened in 1861 as a promenade pier and a landing place for steamers. It was badly damaged during the Second World War but reopened in its present form in 1961. It is currently an amusement park.