Urban History of Portsmouth

The development of Portsmouth is an organic and like other cities a long and multi layered process, however Portsmouth’s history, unlike other cities is clear and easy to read due to its close association with the Navy which resulted in the city being constantly surveyed and recorded as its defences were updated. Developed on what was originally an open, marshy outcrop called Portsea Island, Portsmouth started from humble origins as a landing and surveillance post for the Roman Port town of Portchester, which was located in a more sheltered position in Portsmouth Harbour. However as trade increased merchants felt obliged to find alternative locations to land and harbour their ships which led to a hand full of dwellings perilously clinging to the exposed mouth of Portsmouth harbour, mainly around a natural inlet called the Camber. Portsmouth has always had a strategic and military purpose. This sets it apart from other cities such as Chichester and gives it very clear, functional purpose. Unlike most other towns because of the need to defend the dockyards Portsmouth has been extensively documented with up to 340 maps available from the 16^th Century; focused on the development of its fortifications. Portsmouth owes its urban character today because of factors such as trade, foreign policy and the whims of various monarchs. Fundamentally these factors governed how and when the city went through a period of growth or recession

Portsmouth itself was founded as an official entity in 1194 when Richard I issued the town with a Charter thus creating a formal borough. Real expansion started when neighbouring royal land was made available in the form of burgage plots, long thin strips of farmland, situated along a newly formed high street which was orientated north to south. One of the first organisations to establish itself in Portsmouth was the Church with a small cruciform chapel being built in 1185 and the Domus Dei; a religious hospital. Old Portsmouth today is still dominated and defined by what is now St Thomas’ Cathedral meaning the Church sill has a very real presence and as in most cities has had a major impact on the urban fabric and what activity occurs around it, although this is significantly less apparent in Portsmouth than in ancient Cathedral towns such as Winchester or Chichester. Until the dockyards expansion merchant trade dictated the evolution of Portsmouth. The most important south coast port during the medieval era was Southampton, with whom Portsmouth had to concede defeat and this clearly hampered its urban growth, with activity intermittent and stuttering for three centuries from 1204, with additional bursts of growth during the 14th Centuries for campaigns against powers on the continent reflecting foreign policy as a factor in Portsmouth’s development. As a result of Portsmouth’s ever increasing function as a Naval base the city was raided by the French on no less than four occasions in 1338, 1369, 1377 and 1380, leading to it being constantly renewed during this period; however despite this destruction its urban footprint remained consistent in stark contrast to the approach taken after the second world war.

The real stimulus for Portsmouth’s growth came with the permanent development of the docks to the north of the town and under Henry VII and VIII these were established into substantial fixtures and became the focus of the town. Sailors until the late 18th Century mainly disembarked the ships in barges leaving them anchored in the harbour as entered the town through the Sally Port in the sea facing defences, alehouses, brothels, shops, guesthouses inhabited this edge blended with organisations such as the Church, customs and government official’s all conspiring to provide a vibrant mix of functions and activity. By 1550 the first detailed map of Portsmouth coincides with the beginning of the redevelopment of its fortifications in stone. The town even by the standards of the day remained small, the medieval defences still little more than timber and earth; however these would be developed over the next three centuries into the boundary edges that dictated Portsmouth’s future development. Portsmouth’s growth from this point is of course uniquely very easy to read, as updated fortifications were required new maps and studies were produced also detailing the infrastructure of the town. Coincidentally because of this defined boundary Old Portsmouth at this point did not expand outwards but instead became denser, this provided it with protection and keep the surrounding area clear from housing which would have sheltered an approaching enemy

Density in Old Portsmouth was becoming a critical issue in the late 17th Century, as Sir Bernard de Gomme’s improved fortifications of 1685 had left no room for lateral expansion, an overspill was evidently needed. Portsmouth Common was an area to the north of the mill pond inlet separating Portsmouth from the dockyards, containing market gardens and gravel pits until the 1650s when dwellings started to emerge to house the ever increasing workforce and in the space of two decades the densely populated won Portsea had appeared. Walled in with the defensive improvements of 1770 the town was as contained within its own defences, inhabited almost entirely by dockyard employees, a strong sense of community and identity existed with people working and living together closely. In many ways it echoed the urban conditions of Portsmouth built around a central spine street (Queens Street) with several major parallel streets to the north and south, these were in filled with a more rigid grid system of streets and housing than Old Portsmouth, but living, work, trade and leisure were all mixed into one homogenous area. People and their activities are a city, the structures merely forming a framework fro them to inhabit, if a city is complex, multi layered and can accommodate a range of activities then this will be echoed on a social level.

Mapping of Portsmouth and Portsea continued into the 19th Century, as new fortifications were still required and when ordinance surveys came into existence. By 1810 the first ordinance survey shows Portsmouth and Portsea densely packed behind their ramparts, with the expanding and less crowded dockyards. At this point the rest of Portsmouth was still undeveloped, comprising scattered farms and hamlets such as Hilsea and Fratton, all familiar districts incorporated into the urban sprawl of Portsmouth today. As the century progressed these were absorbed by a rigid grid of terraces used to house the ever increasing dockyard workforce; another example of how Portsmouth’s development was still linked inseparably to foreign policy, war and the economy. As Portsmouth extended it often followed natural landmarks already in existence with Commercial Road covering a winding country track and the Fleet Sports Ground covering the Mill Pond that separated Old Portsmouth and Portsea, this organic growth, layering and retention of ancient features is characteristic of central Portsmouth’s urban development right up until the middle of the 20th Century. By 1870 the defences around the densely packed urban cores became obsolete after the demise of the threat of invasion and as the city spread beyond them the triangular fortifications containing Old Portsmouth and Portsea were finally dismantled in 1873 radically changing Portsmouth’s identity. However instead of densely redeveloping the newly opened space, the footprint of the walls was retained as open areas such as Ravelin Park or civic and military structures such as Victoria Barracks, the Guildhall and the Roman Catholic Cathedral; ensuring a footprint of the original fortifications remains.

With the advent of the Second World War unprecedented wide spread destruction of Portsmouth meant almost complete destruction of Portsea and a good portion of Portmouth, after the war a modernist approach was engaged with by planners and architects, rather than the ad-hoc organic growth of the city that had occurred previously. Portsea was wiped clean and rebuilt based on modernist principles, with self- contained blocks of flats surrounded with communal open space while Old Portsmouth was patched up, with gaps filled in following the medieval pattern of the urban fabric, mostly using buildings that conceded contextually with their choice of materiality and form. After the war the separation of city functions was accelerated with housing developments for the dock workers built outside the traditional constraints of the city, shopping relocated and centralised in Commercial road, the Church establishing a Cathedral precinct in Old Portsmouth and administration, everything that had once been contained within Old Portsmouth was now spread around the city, organised into neat sub structures.

In recent times as the dockyards have recessed industries such as leisure at Gun wharf keys have been developed to fill the void in manufacturing a labour trades. Here again is evidence that the built environment can as ever in Portsmouth be seen as reacting to economic stimuli and a shift from manufacture to leisure has meant the development of areas with specific zones for shopping and housing, such as at Gunwharf Quays where signs clearly proclaim ‘Private Residents Only’ in case one feels an impulse to wander around the confusing network of banal and lifeless streets.

Constructing this type of architecture can be seen to reflect continuing shifts in current society with integration and communication between work, living, neighbours and shared cultural activities being eroded as architecture responds to modern culture, encouraging an increasingly insular and self interested existence, nowhere is this more evident that in the new developments at Gunwharf Quays and Admirality Quarter, self contained cages which abandon all attempts to engage with their immediate neighbours or the wider city. This is evident both in the built form of such developments manifested in gated entrances and blank ground floors facing the rest of the city and socially with residents and shoppers able to drive straight under the apartments and designer stores and therefore successfully factor out all risk of engaging with the local area and its inhabitants.