The Portsmouth Society Design Awards began in 1983 to mark our first ten years. Our aim was to encourage good design - of buildings and landscaping - in the city, by recognising high quality contributions to the city’s environment. Our first slogan was “To preserve the best of the old; to ensure the best of the new”. When we started in
Articles
Defences of Portsmouth and Portsea; demolition – and rediscovery
Although there were once two elaborately walled towns on Portsea Island: Portsmouth and Portsea, by the late nineteenth century most of the bastions, ravelins, walls, glacis and moats had disappeared as the towns expanded beyond these tight bands. So local historians were delighted when excavations In November 2018 briefly revealed the arrow-shaped low stone walls which were part of the
Design Awards 2018
The Portsmouth Society is delighted that two new buildings are winners in their Design Competition. The city’s new Bus Station on the Hard, with its soaring roof sheltering waiting passengers, who can see their buses arriving through the transparent walls. Interchange with the train station and ferry terminals is easy through 3 well-positioned entrances/exits. Designed by AHR Group and built
Charles Sargeant Jagger and the Portsmouth War Memorial
Mention the Portsmouth War Memorial, and most people will immediately think, incorrectly, of the imposing Royal Naval monument on Southsea Common. Portsmouth’s civic memorial to the dead of the 1914-18 war from all services, raised by and for the people, is the fine creation in Guildhall Square, Grade II* listed but imprisoned by all the surrounding commercial and municipal activity.
In praise of the National Gardens Scheme – Celia and Deane’s exploration of Historic Houses in Hampshire – September 2018
Deane and I have discovered some wonderful Hampshire houses which we would never otherwise have seen these last two summers, when the owners opened their gardens as part of the National Gardens Scheme. Last year one highlight was Cranbury Park, a splendid house on the crown of a hill. It was probably designed by George Dance in the 1790s for