265 Arundel Street

Here we have another house history - 265 Arundel Street - this was the shop that Auntie Audrey and Uncle Les ran. I remember visiting the shop once or twice. It was a general store which sold newspapers, sweets, cigarettes, bread, cakes, groceries, you name it. As you went in the door there was a counter on the right hand side, and you went through a door through to the back. On one occasion Audrey was talking about noise and disturbance from the Black Dog pub next door. That must have been about 1960.

I remember a small book at home in St John's Road about memories of Portsmouth, with photographs. One of the pictures in that book was this one shown below, which includes the shop. Audrey's name is above it - A O WEBB - Audrey Olive Webb.

You can see that the shop shares the same architectural style as the pub. Quite grand really for a simple shop. And there is a simple explanation - the pub and both shops were built at the same time in 1899, as a replacement for an earlier Black Dog beerhouse. So the shop is actually part of a bigger building consisting of The Black Dog at 263 Arundel Street, and the two shops at 265 and 265A. The whole building was demolished in about 1968 when the area was redeveloped.

The Black Dog - early years

The original Black Dog was built around the late 1840s. It stood on the corner of Arundel Street and St John's Road (coincidence!). The earliest date that we've found a mention of the Black Dog is in the Hampshire Telegraph on 5th May 1849, when a Mr Stares placed an advert offering the Black Dog for sale or rent. Mr Stares was a grocer and one wonders where he got the money to own a pub. A few years later he was bankrupt.

In the 1850s and 1860s there were several tenants who ran the beerhouse for a couple years at a time. But in 1876 the Black Dog was taken over by George Benjamin Wilson. He ran the pub for nearly thirty years, until his death in 1904, and his wife Charlotte continued to run it after that until 1908.

George Benjamin Wilson had retired to the Black Dog from a career as an artist. He was well known in Portsmouth as a scenery painter for theatres and music halls. His obituary in 1904 refers to two paintings with a nautical flavour. One was presented to the Royal Marines at Eastney, depicting the rescue of the crew of a wrecked schooner by a Captain of the Royal Marines. The second was a painting of HMS Discovery in pack ice during the North Polar expedition of 1865. You may remember that we found another connection to that expedition in the history of 45 Adames Road, including this picture.

The Black Dog rebuilding - 1899

The licensing laws during the latter half of the nineteenth century included alehouses and beerhouses, which only sold beer, no wine or spirits. There were hundreds of such beerhouses, which had a deserved reputation for disorderly behaviour. The Black Dog was one of them. The City Council and the licensing magistrates were trying to reduce the amount of drunkenness and bad behaviour by reducing the number of beerhouse licenses. Breweries had cooperated with this approach for many years by giving up several beerhouse licenses at a time in return for a full public house license for a new or refurbished building. And that is what happened with the Black Dog. In about 1890 John Brickwood took over the Black Dog. In 1899 John Brickwood commissioned the architect A E Cogswell to design and build a new Black dog, to include two shops in the open space behind the pub. The building was completed later that year.

These two maps show the before and after, dated from 1896 and 1906.

Arthur Edward Cogswell was a local architect and a friend of John Brickwood, who commissioned him to design many of the Brickwood's public houses in the Portsmouth area. He was also responsible for local shops, banks, churches, schools, cinemas, and libraries. His style is very recognisable throughout the city. He designed over twenty pubs in Portsmouth, including The Talbot at 207 Goldsmith Avenue built in 1896 in his familiar mock Tudor style.

Cogswell and Brickwood were keen supporters of Association Football and both played for a Portsmouth amateur team, with Arthur Conan Doyle in goal. John Brickwood was one of the founders of Portsmouth Football club in 1898.

In 1900, Cogswell built a Brickwoods public house named "The Pompey" next to Fratton Park at 44 Frogmore Road.

And in 1905, Cogswell built a mock Tudor club pavilion in the south west corner of Fratton Park which served as the Portsmouth F.C. club offices and players dressing rooms. The pavilion originally featured a tall clock tower spire and a spectator gallery. The other side of this building is still there today forming the main entrance to Fratton Park, seen in the picture above.

The Black Dog and two shops survived until the area was redeveloped in the late 1960s, but it was a close call on the night of 10th January 1941. On the other side of Arundel Street from the Black Dog, there was Besant Road school. You can see it on the maps above. The school was destroyed during an air raid, the same night that Portsmouth Guildhall was destroyed in flames. In the grounds of Besant Road School was an air raid shelter. It was hit by a bomb killing 80 people. The pub and shops were lucky that night.

The People

So what about the people who occupied the building over its 70 years of existence? We'll have a look at Audrey and Les's shop first, and then the pub and the other shop.

265 Arundel Street

When the shop opened in 1900 it was a tailor and outfitter run by Walter Alfred Good. He was aged only 23 when he opened the shop but unfortunately he didn't last long. He became bankrupt in 1901. He went on to work in various jobs in HM Dockyard.

The next occupant was George Hill who opened as a confectioner in 1903. That was a more suitable type of business for the area, and the shop was always run as that type of business from this moment on. George Hill was a native of Portsmouth married to Clara from the Isle of Wight. They ran the shop until 1921.

Idwal Thomas from Caernarvonshire took over the shop in 1921, as a confectioner and tobacconist. He was still there in 1939, and possibly until his death in Portsmouth in 1948. The records are quite sparse from 1939 onwards.

We know that the shop was being run in 1955 by Mrs Winifred Mary Goodwin. Audrey and Les took over in 1959 until its redevelopment in 1967/8. That was when they took over at 45 Adames Road.

The Black Dog

There were many publicans over the years. We mentioned earlier that George Benjamin Wilson was the publican at the time of the rebuild and he continued until his death in 1904. His wife Charlotte ran the pub for another four years.

Charles Maughan took over in 1910 and was there until 1927.

The next publican was Charles Percival Brown, who became a well known Portsmouth character. He had other business interests in Portsmouth in the restaurant and pub trade. He became a Councillor for many years and at one stage ran for the post of Mayor - unsuccessfully. Reading between the lines in newspaper reports Charles Brown was not entirely above board with his business practices and accounting. When he died in 1950 his obituary said he was recognised for entertaining American soldiers in the First World War. We have found no evidence to support that.

He took over the Black Dog in 1928, and very soon afterwards installed his brother in law Joseph Watson as manager. Joseph stayed until 1932 when he committed suicide in the pub by turning on a gas fire downstairs and not lighting it. He left a note which included the words:

"Condemn all moneylenders to hell"

When the Black Dog was demolished in the late 1960s the publican was Harry Shinn, who had retired from the Royal Navy as a Chief Engine Room Artificer in 1957 after 32 years service.

The other shop at 265A

In its early days this shop sold bicycles for a short while before becoming a greengrocer in 1907 run by Isaac Greenbaum. Isaac was from a German Jewish family and in 1916 he was interned as an enemy alien and was forced to give up the shop. After the war he started up another greengrocery business in Hackney.

As far as we can tell the shop continued to be a greengrocer through the 1920s and 1930s.

By the middle of the 1950s the shop had become a cafe - in the photograph at the top it is 'Workmans Cafe'. This cafe was the scene of an affray in 1957 as described by the Portsmouth Evening News:

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