Paulsgrove: 5 things you didn't know about the Portsmouth area
An oil bore a mile deep, a racecourse railway halt, prefabs built in days and a name nobody can pin down.
In 1936 the D'Arcy Exploration Company drilled an oil test bore near Paulsgrove chalk pit on Portsdown Hill to 6,556 feet (about 1.24 miles) and found no commercially viable oil. Paulsgrove is in northern Portsmouth.
In 1936 the D'Arcy Exploration Company drilled an oil test bore near Paulsgrove chalk pit on Portsdown Hill. It reached 6,556 feet, about 1.24 miles, and found no commercially viable oil. Paulsgrove sits in northern Portsmouth beside Portsdown Hill, and its history includes a racecourse, a railway halt and a big post-war estate. Here are five more things worth knowing.
The oil that wasn't
The Portsmouth Museums page says the test bore was near the chalk pit, and a core was inscribed "OIL BORE, PAULSGROVE". The Friends of Portsdown Hill website says it drilled to 6,556 feet but failed to find a commercially viable supply. A later attempt nearby in 1948 also failed. The date and details are corroborated by search results, but we have kept to the two pages we could open.
A railway halt for the races
Paulsgrove Halt opened in 1928 (Wikipedia gives 10 August 1928) to serve the adjacent Portsmouth racecourse, a pony-racing venue funded by a local businessman. Both closed when the military acquired the land in 1939 for an ammunition dump. The local-history site dates the racecourse to 1928 to 1939, and says Racecourse Lane is named after it, but other sources vary on when the racecourse itself opened, so we date only the halt.
About fifty people
In the 19th century, Paulsgrove had about 50 inhabitants, living by farming, according to a local-history site. The ward's population was 14,010 at the 2011 Census, Wikipedia says. The ward is not exactly the same as the old hamlet, which is why we say "in the ward".
Homes in days
Building of the estate began in 1945 on land bought by Portsmouth council to replace bombed homes, and the first housing was prefabricated. The local history says prefabs were made in sections and some could be erected in as little as four days. That is a general claim about prefabs, not a count of Paulsgrove houses. Many prefabs still stand, heavily modified, according to a Portsdown Tunnels search result.
Room for a motorway
Wikipedia says a strip of open land was left through the estate in the 1950s for the M27 motorway, which was built from 1972 to 1983. A conveyor from the chalk pit ran from 1971 to 1976 to supply construction, says the local history. We cannot confirm the exact opening date of the stretch past Paulsgrove, so we say only that the motorway arrived in the seventies.
What is in the name?
Wikipedia says the name is believed to come from St Paul, who, according to an apocryphal legend, landed at the site. It calls a "more likely explanation" that old maps show Pals Grave, probably a reference to the last resting place of a local chief, perhaps Saxon. The local-history site gives a Saxon called Palla, so Palla's grove. The sources disagree and the origin is not firmly documented.
What we left out
We have not named any private individuals, including the businessman who funded the racecourse.
Visiting
We have not checked access to Portsdown Hill or the chalk pit, so check locally before visiting.
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