"Firing into the Brown" #75 - old prints, schools, and stuff...

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..  appreciate it's light on wargame nonsense, but hey, the boat is in the final throws of being got ready for launch this weekend..

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Found this while doing some browsing on something else...  brilliant stuff...

Print from 1765 showing a slightly stylised view of (some of) the fortifications around Portsmouth at that time - of main interest is Kings Bastion (labelled #7) is in the center just to the right of the road and the Saluting Battery (#6) as they allow you to orientate the view..  the building left is Southsea Castle

...and this is where they are on that excellent 1860 map..

...which tells us that the road we can see in the print is the current sea front road..  fascinating stuff.. well to me anyway...   😀

Print orientation - Southsea Castle (ringed red) on your left looking in the direction of the arrow..  many (all) of the landward fortifications are long gone (1870's) but Kings Bastion is still there (ringed yellow) and Long Curtain Wall is also still there (green line) .. The Saluting Battery is also still there - must get down and get some pictures..

Better view following.. the Saluting Battery is marked Battery Wall..  we shall be revisiting this area in the future as it is also near one of the gate locations..

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I blame Ben for this minor rabbit hole..  😁

In a comment last week he had cause to assume my school dated back to the same time as the Bastions the houses were named after, and while that was not the case, it did give me pause for thought - exactly how old was my old school building?!

Turns out - it's a 100 years old this year..

It started off as Hilsea College in various locations local to the building I attended..

• 1915 In London Road, west
• 1917  London Road, south of Green Posts (a pub)
• 1918-1928 London Road
• 1928 London Road - new college buildings (I think this was the building I eventually went to secondary school in)
• 1928/9 Expanded with two new wings, one girls, one boys
• 26 Jul 1930 New wings opened by Colonel Sir William Dupree 
• 1934-1940 London Road, between Northwood & Elmwood Roads
• School evacuated to Leigh Park House (location is North of the island but Portsmouth was a major Luftwaffe target because of the dockyard and there was a lot of collateral damage in the city)
• During the war Hilsea Barracks and the school were taken over for the use of US troops. These were quartermasters and other supply troops, who supported the many US forces that were based in Hampshire.(Interesting story - at some point in time during my schooling I had a need to go into the attic space - no idea why - but I distinctly remember there being beds up there..  at the time I just assumed that maybe the school had been boarding once..  it wasn't, but those may well have been the beds the GI's had been using..)
• 1944  Hilsea College and Grounds owner sold to the City Council for use as Junior Technical College
• 1955 Building School & Technical Schools merged 
• 1958 Amalgamated with Portsmouth Building School
• 1960-1973 Education Committee, Portsmouth Technical High School, London Road (which was the school I attended) - the Headmaster was T McNeil from 1960-1973 (he'd also been headmaster of the Building School since '48 so had a combined career of 25 years in charge of sweaty pre-pubescent boys - the bloke deserved a medal! 😊)
• 1976 City of Portsmouth Secondary Boys - Headmaster M Pipes 1973/5 or 6 and 1987/9 (which was my school post the move to Comprehensive)
• 2008 Plans for complete rebuild Renamed Trafalgar School (we're nothing if not traditional in Pompey)
• Sep 2015 Planned to take in girls as well (outrageous.. and 50 years too late..😏)

...the old alma mater..  the bow window top left was the prefects room - on Tuesday lunchtimes we were all in there waiting for the new top 20 on Radio 1.. ahhh Kate.. note also the attic windows - that was where I saw the beds

From the Portsmouth local history site (reference Schools)..

Cheers Ben ..  enjoyed that.. 😀

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...