Portsea

Portsea is an area of the English city of Portsmouth, located on Portsea Island, within the ceremonial county of Hampshire.

Engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born at Britain Street in 1806; writer Charles Dickens was born nearby at Landport, in Portsea, on 7 February 1812; the professor William Garnett was born in Portsea on December 30, 1850.

The area was originally known as the "Common" and lay between the town of Portsmouth and the nearby Dockyard. The Common started to be developed at the end of the 17th, as a response to the overcrowding in the walled town of Portsmouth. This development worried the governor of the dockyard as he feared that the new buildings would provide cover for any forces attempting to attack the dockyard. In 1703, he threatened to demolish any buildings within range of the cannons mounted on the dockyard walls. However, after a petition to King George, royal consent for the development was granted in 1704. In 1792 the name of the area was changed from the Common to Portsea. By then it was home to a mixed dockside population.

William Tucker, baptised there in 1784, was convicted of shoplifting from a Portsea tailor, William Wilday, in 1798 and transported to New South Wales on the "death ship" Hillsborough which took convicts and typhus with it from Portsmouth. Tucker escaped and made it all the way back to Britain in 1803 only to be taken to Portsmouth for re-embarkation to Australia. If not Portsea's most distinguished son he was certainly one of its more colourful and enterprising ones. He was later a sealer (seal hunter), established the retail trade in preserved Maori heads and settled in Otago, New Zealand where he became that country's first art dealer before falling victim to his hosts in 1817 and being eaten. The novelist Sarah Doudney was born in Portsea on 15 January 1841.

By the start of the 20th century Portsmouth council had started to clear much of the slum housing in Portsea. The city's first council houses were built in the district in 1911. The 1920s and 1930s saw extensive redevelopment of the area, with many of the older slums being replaced by new council houses.

The area's proximity to the dockyard resulted in its taking massive bomb damage during World War II. After the war the area was redeveloped as all council housing, in a mixture of houses, maisonettes and tower blocks.

The Church of England parish of Portsea covers a wider area than the district of Portsea, but does not include the entirety of Portsea Island.