Portsmouth Airport

Portsmouth Airport in its heyday

I’ve just started a new project researching Portsmouth Airport.

Plent of people have written about the Airport before. There are books about the planes, or about the people who flew the planes, or full of wonderful pictures of all of the above. But none of them really tell us very much about how the Airport came about, the impact that it had on the city, and the reasons for its demise. Also, what happened to the site after it closed?

Work was begun on the airport in 1930, giving local people unemployed during the great depression something to work on. The airport was opened in 1932 with a flying display attended by thousands of people. Soon after it opened the company Airspeed moved its factory to Portsmouth from York. Founded by the author Nevil Shute Norway, Airspeed are well known as the builders of the wartime Horsa Glider, and the Airspeed Oxford monoplane.

As well as attracting aeronautical industries, the airport also proved to be a base for airline companies. However the Airport never really achieved its full potential, unlike its counterpart at Southampton. The Royal Navy were anxious to limit activity at the site, as it impacted on its own flying operations at HMS Daedelus in Gosport. A scheme to turn Langstone Harbour into a base for Flying boats was turned down by the Government after the Navy opposed it, as was a scheme to turn Farlington Marshes into an airport.

As aircraft became more demanding, the grass runways at the Airport severely limited what planes could use the facility, and several crashes in 1967 and rapidly growing losses lead to the closure of the Airport in 1973. The city began to focus more on developing its commercial port, and the Airport site was earmarked for redevelopment. It eventually became an Industrial estate, and the Anchorage Park housing estate.

We know very well all of the developments – the dates, the people, the planes, the technicalities. But what we do not know, is just what impact the Airport had on the city, its people, its economy, its culture, and its geography. These are gaps that I hope I will be able to fill. Theres a whole load of sources out there that no-one has looked at – City Council records, the Evening News, and Government records in the National Archives. There some very important parts of the story yet to be told.

Book of the week # 8 – The Spirit of Portsmouth

The Spirit of Portsmouth - Webb, Quail, Haskell and Riley

A city like Portsmouth is always going to be a difficult one to write about. Its got to be nigh on impossible to ever try and write a book about one place, and to be able to say definitely that it is THE history of a town or a city. Let alone a city as momentous, pivotal and diverse and Portsmouth.

Among the plethora of books about Portsmouth, this is probably the closest to a definitive history that you will get at present. Rather than attempting to give a narrative view of Portsmouth, which would take forever and would be very disjointed, the authors take a more thematic approach, offering chapters on Portsmouths geography, the dockyard and Navy, Religion, Government, Leisure, and its future. It is an admirable collection of chapters, particular Ray Riley’s chapter on Wooden Walls and Ironclads, which draws on his wealth of expertise in this area. It also focusses particularly well on Portsmouth’s early development as a town. Another aspect that makes this book invaluable is its considerable bibliography and endnotes, which are a helpful guide to Local History sources.

Reading from a distance of 20 years, it does show its age, however. Modern local history would probably make far more use of ordinary people’s contributions, and would look further than the grand developments and big personalities. This is very much a ‘top-down’ approach, particularly the importance given to religion and Government. Neither is it definitive, and would probably serve more as an intriduction and signpost to other more detailed works, such as the various Portsmouth Papers. But is is a very important contribution to Portsmouth’s Historiography none the less, and hopefully provides a very useful model for a 21st Century version.

Click here to buy The Spirit of Portsmouth