22 Merry Row

Our Osborne grandparents lived in 22 Merry Row, Portsea from about 1917 to 1928. This page is a history of the house, and some of the people that lived there.

Location

This map below from 1931 shows where Merry Row was located.

Origins

In the early 1800s there was an area of agricultural land in Portsea called Cherry Garden Field. It extended from Commercial Road in the west, and Lake Road in the south, to Kingston Crescent in the north and Fratton Road in the east. It is the red shaded area on this 1791 map.

Cherry Garden Field was divided into strips of land each subject to its own tithe or tax and generally worked as a smallholding by its owner. With the expansion of the naval dockyard from the 1840s, Cherry Garden Field was developed as housing for dockyard workers. The development and road layouts followed the lines of the original strips of land. Merry Row was built within this development. If you look again at the map, along the bottom of the red area there is a row of buildings just touching the word 'Common'. Those buildings were in what became Lake Road, and Merry Row was built on the strip of land behind that row of buildings, known as Merry Garden Row. It was narrow and contained only a single row of houses on the south side. The north side faced onto the back yards of houses in Hertford Street.

Development

The houses in Merry Row were built in the 1840s. There was nothing there in the 1841 census, but it was complete ten years later in the 1851 census. An 1844 newspaper announcement offered four houses and a building plot for sale in Merry Garden Row. An 1845 tithe map shows several houses in Merry Row, one of them being our number 22. So probably number 22 was built around 1844. This plan shows Merry Row after its completed development. The houses highlighted in red are those that existed on the 1845 tithe map. Number 22 is identified with a green spot.

We can see that there are three distinct blocks of housing, separated by a large area which was originally used for stables and storage sheds. Number 1 is the first house at the bottom, in a block of 7. The houses were originally numbered straight through from 1 to 22, but the numbers were changed around 1876 . The first block, numbers 1 to 7, remained the same, but the houses on the other side of the open area became 18 to 32. Presumably this was a provision for building 10 houses in the undeveloped area - which never actually happened. This means that our number 22 was originally number 12 between 1849 and 1876, but in this narrative we'll refer to it always as number 22.

Social Environment

The houses in Merry Row were mainly flat fronted two up two down houses, with a front door that opened directly onto the street, and a back yard. They were quite small, but some were bigger. Water was obtained from a well shared among the houses, possibly more than one well. Later there may have been a communal standpipe. None of the houses had toilets, again there was originally a communal facility. Lighting would have been candles, oil lamps, and later possibly gas lamps. After the 1914-1918 war some of the houses would have been upgraded with their own sanitation and electricity.

Just before the First World War the open area later had a factory built on it, which made life very unpleasant for residents of Merry Row. This factory was operated by Midland Cattle Products (MCP) whose business was transforming animal waste products (bones, offal, skin etc) into fertiliser. Their processes produced a very obnoxious smell which was the subject of complaints and attention from the council. In addition to MCP there were stables and a manure dealer - so from about 1913 onwards Merry Row was blighted with constant awful smells.

In 1930 5 houses in Merry Row, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22, were condemned by the council as unfit for habitation. This is the middle block of the three, which includes number 22. This block was the closest to the MCP factory, and would have borne the brunt of the offensive contamination. The 5 houses were purchased by MCP and demolished and replaced by a larger factory. So MCPs closest neighbours had been eliminated, only to make things worse for the remainder and other local residents. It took another ten years before the MCP problem was resolved. In about 1940 the company was forced to move to the coast at Wicor Mill, Portchester, where the smells and the complaints continued.

Most of the Merry Row houses were rented, at the cheaper end of the market. Before the first war rents were about 4 shillings a week. Number 22 was rented at 4s 6d in 1914. Some others in Merry Row were rented at 6s in 1914 which confirms the variation in size of the houses.

The tenants were always poorer working class people, many working in the dockyard. From census records there is also evidence of recently widowed women moving in with their children, some of them on poor relief. Perhaps some of the houses were owned by the parish and allocated to such cases as temporary accommodation.

The local newspapers report lots of criminal activities over the years, mainly petty crimes such as drunkenness and theft. There are also cases of child neglect usually brought on by drunkenness. There was at least one case of suicide in Merry Row.

Merry Row itself remained unscathed by bombing in the Second World War, but the wider area was badly damaged. Merry Row was demolished as part of the post war redevelopment in the 1960s.

Residents

Our Osborne grandparents lived in number 22 from about 1917 to 1928. Six of their nine children were born there. At one time there must have been 6 or 7 of the children living at home - all in a four roomed house. This was during the period of MCP activity on their doorstep, so it was a hard life. Val has written in detail about this period in her narrative about our Granny. The Osbornes were the last occupants before the houses were demolished in 1930, having stayed there longer than any other occupants.

From census records, rate books, electoral rolls and newspapers we have identified some of the earlier occupants As you would expect all of them are working class, many from poor backgrounds.

Here's a list of all the occupants we know about and dates they lived there. There are certainly more occupants that we haven't found - they changed frequently.

George Sparks 1851 - A dockyard labourer with his wife and daughter.

Jesse Varns 1861 - 1865 An agricultural labourer - one of the last in this area. With two children and two grandchildren.

Nicholls 1866

Richard Merrett 1871 - Aged 21 - a general dealer with wife and baby. Grandson of Jesse Varns above.

Lavinia Norman 1872 - See below.

Eliza Starley 1876 - 1881 A widow in her 70s.

Mary Hawkins 1891 - A widow aged 44 on poor relief. With her daughter.

William Kimber 1896

Henry Fowler 1901 - Bricklayer's labourer. Age 48 with his wife, niece and nephew.

Eliza Ayers 1911 - See below.

Robert Rook 1915 - Spent time in the workhouse with his family in 1902 aged 10. Two years later his father tried to commit suicide by drinking carbolic oil. Enlisted in the Hampshire Regiment in 1915. Went on to work as a skilled labourer in the Dockyard. Awarded the Imperial Service Medal after he retired in 1953.

Martha Lavinia Norman 1871/3

In the 1860s the Royal Navy was trying out the idea of gun turrets in their ships. At this time all their large ships were equipped with sails as well as engines, and the masts and rigging obstructed the field of fire of rotating gun turrets. One experiment that was tried in a ship called HMS Captain launched in 1869, had two turrets firing through large openings in the side of the ship. Here she is in an oil painting.

But there was a serious flaw in this design. The ship was top heavy and had a tendency to take on water in rough seas. On 6th September 1870 she was sailing with 10 other ships off Cape Finisterre when the weather worsened. In stormy seas she capsized and sank with loss of around 480 lives. These are commemorated in a plaque in St. Paul's cathedral. One of these was a seaman called Stephen Norman. His wife Martha Lavinia and five children lived in Portsmouth, and after his death they became destitute and for a while they had to move into cheaper lodgings - which was how they came to live in 22 Merry Row. Martha and her children were destined for a life in the workhouse but her brother in law John Norman came to the rescue. He adopted the family and lived together with Martha for the rest of their lives.

Eliza Ayers 1911

She was married to Walter Ayers, a maltster and publican who ran the Castle in the Air on Fareham quay. He died in 1907 and she became a charwoman, living at number 22 Merry Row with her son Leonard, a printer. She died in 1914 after falling over and hitting her head on a door handle.

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