Why is Purbrook called Purbrook? The water sprite story

Purbrook is named after a water sprite, a tiny magical river goblin. We are not joking. If your garden floods, you now know who to blame.

The short answer

Wikipedia says the name comes from Pucanbroc, a name that means "the brook of the water sprite". The reel jokes that the sprite is still banned from the village. It is a delightful name story, and it has no pub in sight, which is rare round here.

Back when it was all forest

Before 1815 this was all the Forest of Bere, a forest that ran from the Sussex border to Winchester. It is a useful thing to remember when you drive through, because most of what you see is younger than the Battle of Waterloo.

The mansion that became a school

Purbrook Park School is built around an actual mansion. The house dates from 1770 and was rebuilt in 1837. Among the pupils who went there is the footballer Mason Mount, who has played for England, Chelsea and Manchester United. It is fair to say that is a better record than the portacabin the narrator of our reel was taught in.

The man who tried to tunnel under Portsdown Hill

This is the story that surprises people. Peter Taylor, who owned Purbrook Park, tried to dig a tunnel from Crookhorn under Portsdown Hill to find water for Portsmouth. He was reviving a water company Act from 1741. According to the History in Portsmouth website, he tunnelled through most of the hill without hitting water and then ran out of money. So we do not claim it worked: the water never came.

Taylor was a silversmith turned army paymaster. Wikipedia says he was apprenticed to a goldsmith in 1728, worked as a silversmith in the Strand in 1755, became Deputy Paymaster in Germany during the Seven Years' War and was MP for Portsmouth from 1774 to 1777. The paymaster detail comes mainly from Wikipedia, so treat it with that in mind.

A school with a mast

Purbrook had a boys' industrial school on Stakes Road, founded by the squire John Deverell. By 1877 its facilities included a mast and rigging to give nautical instruction to boys inclined to the sea. Sources disagree on when it opened (1868 or 1869), so we give no year.

The church and the row

St John the Baptist's Church was begun in 1843 and consecrated in 1858. A conflict between the Rector of Farlington and the squire, John Deverell, delayed it. That is a fifteen-year wait for a church, because two men could not agree.

Famous names from Purbrook

The Countess of Strathmore, Mary Eleanor Bowes, lived quietly at Purbrook Park after 1792. Her life inspired Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon, and Westminster Abbey calls her an ancestress of the Queen Mother. We are not saying where she died, because the sources disagree. The painter George W. Joy, best known for The Death of General Gordon, retired to Purbrook and died there on 28 October 1925. Major General Edward Ingouville-Williams, nicknamed "Inky Bill", was born in Purbrook on 13 December 1861 and was killed by shrapnel on the Somme on 22 July 1916. The soprano April Cantelo was born here in 1928 and created the role of Helena in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1960.

The town that was never built

The Times of 9 February 1944 reported "another satellite town for Portsmouth to accommodate 20,000" projected between Purbrook and Waterlooville. This is a single source, a local-history book quoting The Times, and we could not reach the newspaper itself. It was never built.

Fort Purbrook

And on the hill sits Fort Purbrook, a Victorian fort built to keep the French out. We have a separate story on that one.

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