Chichester Yacht Club Magazine April 2018 | Page 16

Historic Portsmouth walk March 17th led by Andrew Negus.
Report by Sue Brown
Twenty members of CYC mustered at the
dockyard gates and despite the sub-zero
temperatures sallied forth in search of
evidence of Portsmouth’s historic past,
which Andrew Negus had described so
vividly in his Sunday lectures at the club this
winter.
Onward to the old barracks, since 1732 part
of Portsmouth Grammar School. There, a
row of handsome buildings remains,
including the one where the Duke of
Buckingham met his bloody end.
We saw a replica of the tiny cobbler’s shop
where John Pound made it his business to
It didn’t take much sallying to find our first
feed, clothe and educate the homeless and
piece of evidence as our gaze travelled over poorest children of the town.
to the anchorage of HMS Warrior, built in
1860, the fastest ship on the seas, for a
Then Lombard street, a hidden gem with
while, anyway, and for which the dockyard
historic houses, surprising survivors given
had to be enlarged.
the huge number of air raids on the town
during the war.
On to St Johns square, the so-called
medieval gateway to Normandy and where The bombs also destroyed the old chapel
Brunel’s father invented a machine to make which is now the site of the architecturally
pulley blocks for the navy and then the
jumbled but characterful cathedral, last
Landport gate, an arch of Portland stone
resting place of the aforementioned Duke of
and a reminder of the landward defences of Buckingham’s bowels (if you want to know
old Portsmouth which still stands very much more ask Andrew)!
as Nelson would have known it.
Gun Wharf Quays used to bristle with
cannon to protect it from the sea but now
only strikes terror into the hearts of non-
shoppers.
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