The 1860 Act of Parliament, authorising the construction of the Havant to Hayling Island branch line included the reclamation of 1000 acres of mud land by the construction of the railway embankment in Langstone Harbour. Mr Robert Hume (a prominent supporter of the branch line) bought the mud lands in 1863 from the representatives of [...]
Peter
The following article appeared in the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc. Portsmouth England), Saturday, July 28, 1877; Issue 4690. Describes how the annual encampment of the 1st Administrative Battalion of the Hampshire Rifle Volunteers were supplied for the first time with gas lighting. The introduction of gas to the island was celebrated on this [...]
Portsmouth being an important naval base required an improved transport link with London for the conveyance of goods. At the time goods had to be carried by ship, through the English Channel, to the Port of London. These waters were dangerous due to the numerous sandbanks and exposed to potential enemy action. The canal was [...]
email peter Member of Hayling’s Best Community Organisation. Community Projects I am involved in:- HB50 Project (2011-2013). Led this project with support from a number of local groups and volunteers. Awarded best exhibition of 2013, The News Guides Award. Status Completed. Lottery funded HB Heritage Project (2014). Member of the Partnership Board with HCC and HCB, Leading on [...]
The political climate had changed and as a result, the drive to create satellites to the Port of London had diminished. The objective of creating a goods railway onto Hayling had sunk with the crumbling embankments. It really seemed that the Hayling venture was a complete failure. A change of direction was needed if the [...]
1864 Act of Parliament Construction of the railway as defined in the 1860 Act was slow and had not started in 1862 leading to a notice being placed in the London Gazette, 26 November 1862, that an application to abandon the railway and dissolve the Company was to be made. Work did start mid 1863 [...]
Proposed Bill A notice was published in the the November 25th 1859 London Gazette advising of the intention to bring a Bill before parliament to form a Company, working with the L&SWR, the LB&SCR and The Portsmouth Railway to create merchant docks, connected by railway, as described in the 1855 proposal in the Nautical Magazine. [...]
In the winter of 1857/8, the Portsmouth Company’s railway line between Godalming and Havant was connected to the London Brighton & South Coast Railway LB&SCR) at Havant. This provided a much shorter route to London via Guildford. Incredibly, running rights over the LB&SCR to Portcreek Junction had not yet been agreed and thus left the new [...]
The confidence in our ability to trade freely around the world following the 1815 British victory at Waterloo was badly shaken in the late 1850s. France once more posed a threat under Napoleon III with her renewed territorial ambitions. Shipping through the English Channel, to reach the Port of London, was once more considered to [...]
Introduction Railways provided great opportunities to improve connections throughout Britain but steam vessels introduced a new and deadly threat our commercial trade at time of war, in particular, to ships travelling through the narrow seas of the English Channel, to reach the Port of London. A paper was published in the 1855 Naval Chronicle, which [...]
