During the previous research methods module, I visited the archives at Portsmouth library in order to discover more about Southsea Common for the group project. Whilst there, I carried out some research into Seaside Shelters specifically, for both my own interest and with a future project in mind. Once again information on the shelters was illusive. I sometimes think I’m looking too deeply into the shelters, looking for a specific moment in time when the shelters arrived with a fanfare, when the reality is that they were installed as a piece of street furniture alongside the bandstands, lamp columns and tram stops as a piece of architecture demanded by the times and increased use of the seafront for leisure. Looking through council log books found several mentions of the shelters, but they were fleeting and non specific with regards dates, designs and locations. What I did find on my return using the university Discovery system, was several articles alluding to the requirement for shelters, and one specifically by the Roads and Works Committee of Portsmouth in the Portsmouth Evening News in 1880 recommending the ‘immediate erection of six iron shelters on the Southsea Clarence Parade’. I also found a reference to the Southsea shelters manufacturer in the book ‘Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain’ by Paul Dobraszczyk. The shelters were produced by Walter Macfarlane and Co who mass produced many of the seaside shelters across the country during the period. Although suing the phrase ‘mass produced’ is slightly misleading because I have yet to find any two seaside resorts with the same seaside shelters!
This was a satisfying bit of research – I’d struggled to find any specific details on the shelters in Southsea itself until this point.
"To-day." Portsmouth Evening News, 7 Jan. 1880, p. 2. British Library Newspapers, link.gale.
com/apps/doc/IG3218530927/BNCN?u=uniportsmouth&sid=bookmark-BNCN&xid=
bbcd5cbb. Accessed 4 Nov. 2021.
"Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain Myth and Modernity, Excess and Enchantment"
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