Exploring Old Portsmouth with Vintage Secret

Naomi Thompson is a well respected vintage fashion writer, blogger, stylist and personal shopper who recently moved to Portsmouth after a long stint in London and has been discovering the city and the island with fresh eyes. Naomi recently put up a post on www.vintagesecret.com where she explores around The Camber and Old Portsmouth with lots of great photos to illustrate why Portsmouth can be an inspirational place. Click on the link below to see and read more. You can follow Vintage Secret on Twitter too HERE.

www.vintagesecret.com/2012/01/inspiration/

Duncan Toms Walking Films

Duncan Toms has walked many, many miles around some of the best places in Hampshire and for each walk documents it with a short film showing the sights and sounds along the way. With 34 walking films under his belt and new ones going up almost weekly expect to be inspired to go out and get walking yourself.

Below is Duncan’s walk along The Solent Way in Portsmouth, visit Duncan’s YouTube Channel to watch more and Duncan’s blog for more information.

www.youtube.com/user/duncantoms

dtoms.com/walks

National Petition To Save HM Coastguard Stations

As someone who has grown up by the sea and spends many hours during the summer out on the Solent, this is an issue close to me as i’m sure it is many others in the Portsmouth & Southsea area who enjoy the Solent for leisure and recreation.

In December 2010 the UK Government announced modernisation consultation proposals for HM Coastguard. At that time the intention was to reduce the UK’s eighteen Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centres to just two centres which would operate 24hrs per day. These centres (MOC’s) would be supported by only five sub centres that would only be operational throughout “daylight hours only”.

UK Coastguard HQ Centres are responsible for the co-ordination of Search and Rescue along the UK coastline, as well as providing shipping information and a number of other essential services along the UK coastline.

Announcing the cuts, Shipping Minister Mike Penning said “Our seas are becoming busier, with larger ships and increasing numbers of offshore renewable energy platforms making key areas of our seas more congested. There are also increasing numbers of people using our beaches, coastlines and seas for leisure activities.”

The proposals were overwhelmingly rejected by EVERY Coastguard station, campaigners and by the Transport Select Committee who conducted a full investigation and concluded that the modernisation proposals were “seriously flawed”.

If you care to sign this petition in favour of keeping our coastline safe then please visit www.petitiononline.com/SHMCGS

The Langstone Ark Project

The Langstone Ark is a project being run by Langstone Harbour’s Environment Officer Louise MacCallum that went live on-line in August. The project aims to create a digital collection of all the animals and plants associated with Langstone Harbour, by asking harbour users, visitors, and anyone else with an interest in the harbour to send digital photographs of wildlife taken on the water, or around the shoreline.

So far, over 150 photographs have been contributed to the project, and nearly 100 species are now represented. There are literally 1000’s of species of animal and plant to be found around the harbour however, so there are plenty of gaps in the project left to fill!

Autumn is a great time of year to see wildlife around Langstone Harbour, with thousands of migratory birds beginning to arrive and beautiful fungi springing up on many of the wildlife reserves dotted around the shoreline.

For more information about the project visit the Langstone Harbour Board’s brand new website at www.langstoneharbour.org.uk and send photographic contributions to ark@langstoneharbour.org.uk

Below are just a few of the contributors photographs so far, and you can see all of them over at the gallery HERE.

Kestrel by B.D. McGregor

Little Tern by Mark Milum

Grey Seal by Nick Lyon

Horsea Island Lake

Horsea Island currently isn’t actually an island anymore, it’s more recognisable as the land reclaimed from the sea to form Port Solent, the old land fill and also the home to part of HMS Excellent. Before it’s joining to the mainland the island in Portsmouth Harbour was actually two islands, Great and Little Horsea. In the early 1800s both islands were homes to farms but by 1885 the islands had been purchased by the Admiralty which had plans to build a very early torpedo test station. Over a period of four years the two islands became one, with convicts using chalk spill to join them from Paulsgrove chalk pit on Portsdown Hill, where the islands joined a new rectangular lake was formed.

The new lake was 800 yards long (later extended to over 1000 yards) with access via a harbour entrance and maintained naturally by two submerged freshwater springs. The lake had a torpedo firing building two stories high with launch tubes above and below the waterline. The facility was opened in 1889 and named the Whitehead Torpedo Adjusting and Experimental Range. By the 1st World War torpedo range had developed so much that even with the lake extension it was no longer needed. The lake and island became the site of one of the Navy’s three high-power shore wireless stations and then later a testing station for early submarines, motor torpedo boats and ejector seats.

In later years the lake became a diving school for the navy that was also opened up to the public for diving for a while. For diving purposes the lake contains a wealth of marine life and also has a number of items placed for diver training including a helicopter, vehicles and a 200 year-old ship wreck.

Despite there no longer being public access to the lake it’s distinctive shape is still easily recognisable from the top of the hill but the base itself is very discrete and has probably been discovered mostly by accident when taking a wrong turn out of Port Solent and finding the armed guards gates a bit of a surprise. A couple of years ago there were grand designs that the island would also one day be home to the new Portsmouth FC stadium, which now seems unlikely.

Over it’s long and varied history Horsea Island forms yet another piece of the fascinating and diverse history of Portsmouth Harbour. You can find out more on Wikipedia and also the detailed history on the Minewarfare & Clearance Diving Officers’ Association website.

MMS113 Wreck

Portsmouth Harbour has many ancient and not so old wrecks within it’s watery margins, many of which have been logged by marine archeologists. Despite the wreak locations being logged many of the craft remain unidentified and for many of the small craft despite being identified much of their history is unknown.

Located on the shoreline close to Priory Road in Gosport is the wreak of MMS113 which was chosen by a group of Maritime Archaeology Students from the University of Southampton as the subject of a full historical and archaeological survey. The wreak was well known by the local people and a Facebook page was set up to try and find out as much information about the minesweeper. The page collected together many pieces of information about the history of the craft both in it’s life before becoming a wreak and after as well as some paintings and photos resulting in the wreak’s history being mapped out from construction to it’s last resting place.

If this sounds interesting check the Facebook page to find out more plus if you know any more information be sure to get in touch with them.

Do You Know This Wreak?

Southsea Boutique Market

Southsea Boutique Market ask that you come along to their fun vintage style market on the first Saturday of every month at St Swithun’s Church Hall, just off Albert Road Southsea. They have a fine selection of friendly sellers all waiting to meet you and show what great talent we have in Southsea. There is beautiful handmade jewellery, stunning decoupage items, superb hand crafted wares lovingly created especially for the market by local traders, as well as an array of wonderful vintage and pre-loved clothing, books and toys we will have plenty to look at, buy and see.

Come and browse or simply join them for a cup of tea and delicious handmade cake served on the finest vintage crockery China. Free tasty barley water squash for children when tea or cake is purchased! You will be warmly welcomed to our fun market with a terrific atmosphere. Check out all the details over at their Facebook.

Pete Thorne Portsmouth Panoramic

Click HERE to take a little journey out in to the Solent for view of Gosport & Portsmouth courtesy of Pete Thornes panoramic.

Portsmouth’s Big Day Out

Portsmouth’s BIG Day Out is just round the corner offering all sorts of deals at Restaurants, Bars, Cafes, Museums, The Dockyard, Spinnaker and much more. Check out all the details of at www.portsmouthbigdayout.co.uk and also at their Facebook. To view the terms and conditions for this weekend, please click HERE

Hayling Ferry Saved

In response to our last post regarding the cancellation of funding for the Hayling Island Ferry we are pleased to let you know that the service is no longer under threat – PCF has been notified by Cllr Jason Fazackarley that PCC will not be cutting the subsidy. Cllr Fazackarley said:

“It [the ferry] is saved, I have removed this [the proposed cut] as an offered saving by officers so Portsmouth contribution towards the ferry operation will remain unchanged. I cannot speak for any changes that the County Council may decide to make but Portsmouth City Council will NOT be making any cut to the subsidy.”

Hopefully some of you contacted you councillors and I know some of you even got responses:

Dear Martin, Thanks for the email. We have looked at this matter today and the money has been found to cover this. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to contact us.

Cllrs Lee Hunt & Margaret Adair

Just look how happy we all are. Good job too as we’ll be riding over to Hayling this weekend and taking the Ferry back after a few jars at The Ferry Inn. Hip hip hooray.

Photos: Tristan Savage & Paul Gonella

PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage