2004 Celebratory Festival
T E Owen Website
Thomas Ellis Owen, creator of Southsea's 'garden suburb' from 1830-1862 was justly celebrated in the very enjoyable festival in early July. An English Heritage plaque on Dovercourt, his house in Kent Road, was unveiled by his great great grandson, watched by junior girls from Portsmouth High School. An evening soiree drawing on programmes held in Owen's house with modern equivalents was held in St. Jude's Church. Brian Kidd judged a nineteenth century style flower show; there were art and sculpture trails; children's activities and puppet shows; street theatre: Jacob, Thomas Ellis and Catherine Owen discussing their developments; and, best of all in a lot of people's view, a splendid play: The 'Ouses in Between', a debate on the Owen's achievement based by Dominic Symonds, Stuart Olesker and John Stanton on music hall songs for three nights in the Norrish Central Library. It took the form of a debate between a dockyard worker, whose family suffered deaths from cholera which Owen tried so hard to remediate by activating the Public Health Act in Portsmouth, and an engineer discussing Owen's work with Louisa, Owen's daughter. His skill as a capitalist and entrepreneur was well brought out. The play was witty, amusing and exuberant – with sly references to the present day, via slides of the Millennium Tower, Tricorn etc.!Building on the Society's celebration of Owen ten years ago, two mornings of lectures added much to our knowledge of Owen. David Lloyd discussed whether Owen met John Nash, architect and developer of the processional way from Regents Park to Pall Mall and Park Villages West and East which he believes inspired Owen's designs for Southsea. These were completed between 1824 and 1840 by James Pennethorne, when Owen was in London as a pupil of James White Higgins, whose daughter he married. Repton the landscape designer worked in Nash's office, and Nash died at East Cowes Castle. Henry Phythian Adams, Owen's great great grandson presented the complex family tree of the Owens, Underhills and Higgins, and showed portraits of many of them. Owen was mayor of Portsmouth Corporation when the Steam Basin in Portsmouth was opened.
The Illustrated London News of 1848 shows Owen presenting an address to Queen Victoria. He quoted newspaper accounts of Owen, the 'power of Southsea', from fields, a lonely farmhouse [still there at the eastern end of Marmion Road], where 'streets and villas sprang up as if by magic'.
Freddie O'Dwyer described Jacob Owen's work as Principal Architect for the Irish Board of Works, and John Pike the current conservation of Owen's Southsea. Deane and I will review the rediscovery of Owen and conservation of the area since the early 1970s in our lecture to the Fareham Society in October.
Owen's special design skill was the landscape and gardens, into which his villas were set. These are minutely detailed on the Ordnance Survey plans – which he and his father Jacob Owen drew up. Each villa and terrace is set in gardens, some of them communal still, with trees including sweet and horse chestnuts, walnuts and others.
The trees are now very large, and some of the landscape features have disappeared, such as the flowerbed at Dovercourt, his house in Kent Road, where many of the events last week took place. Portsmouth High School junior department who now occupy Dovercourt, were immensely helpful, but they currently have the whole very large space in front of the house concreted as a carpark. They recently made a lovely garden/sitting area for the senior girls behind Owen's first house, Swiss Cottage, on the corner of Kent Road and Sussex Road.
It seems to the Society that a landscape survey which would provide guidelines for the restoration of Owen features, and replanting plans as Owen's trees get older would be a fitting way to mark what was a very successful celebration of a fine piece of early Victorian design
Celia Clark