Portsmouth history: 5 things you didn't know

Portsmouth Dockyard is home to a dry dock that Wikipedia describes as the world's oldest still in use. That is the headline claim in a city with more surprises than its reputation suggests. Here are five facts, with the caveats attached where our sources disagree.

The dry dock that is still working

Henry VII ordered a dry dock to be built at Portsmouth in 1495, and the Science Museum Group records its first use in 1496. Dummer's Great Stone Dock was begun in 1691 and finished in 1698, then rebuilt in 1769. It is now No. 5 Dock, and the Portsmouth Dockyard article on Wikipedia carries the claim that it is the world's oldest dry dock still in use. A wording of "oldest surviving dry dock" also appears, and a Royal Navy blog is more cautious. The claim that Portsmouth had the world's first dry dock is contested, so we haven't made it.

An island city

Most of Portsmouth sits on Portsea Island, which had 165,248 residents at the 2021 census, according to Wikipedia's Portsea Island article. That makes it the third most populated island in the British Isles, after Great Britain and Ireland. It is easy to forget you are on an island when you are standing in a shopping street, but the figure shows that this is no small sandbank.

The nickname

The origin of the city's nickname, Pompey, is uncertain. One theory is that ships' logbooks abbreviated Portsmouth Point. We mention it only in passing here because the theories are covered on their own page.

The Round Tower started life in wood

The Round Tower began as a wooden tower ordered by Henry V and was rebuilt in stone in the 1490s. The sources disagree on the date of the wooden version: Wikipedia) says it was built between 1418 and 1426, while one guide gives 1415. We have left the year out rather than guess. It is a useful reminder that even the best-known landmarks have loose edges in the record.

The first production line

The Portsmouth Block Mills, designed by Marc Brunel, made the wooden pulley blocks that ships needed. Wikipedia says that ten men using the machinery could produce as many blocks as 110 skilled craftsmen. The Science Museum displays the machinery as the first production line, and the Portsmouth article says the mills started the age of mass production. As ever with "first" claims, that is how those sources describe it, not a universal verdict.

One thing we left out

You may have heard that a major fire at the dockyard in 1913 was started by suffragettes. We looked for confirmation of the cause and could not find it, so it isn't in this story.

If you are heading down from Waterlooville for a day by the harbour, you now have a few facts to drop into conversation, with a note of caution attached to each.

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