Battle of Southsea Exhibition at Portsmouth City Museum

The Battle of Southsea Exhibition is on display at Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery.

Transcript

00:00Wednesday, August the 5th, 1874. On the evening of the August the 5th, the people of Portsmouth,

00:07armed with axes and hammers, saws and crowbars, took to the Common, gathering opposite the pier.

00:13Cheers erupted when Barney Miller and Mernowa Jeps addressed the crowds from the top of a funeral van,

00:18which was carrying a huge battering ram. The band of HMS Vincent could be heard in the background, playing on the pier.

00:25Miller and Jeps then led the gathering crowd to the barricade, which consisted of three-inch thick planks

00:32bolted together, four feet into the ground. The timber was strengthened with stacks of bricks.

00:38A forty-strong force of workers and pier company porters, supervised by Special Constable Brown, guarded the barricade.

00:47My name's Jackson Batchelor. I'm Simon Barry.

00:50Can you tell us where we are?

00:52We are in the City Museum and Art Gallery, and we are just in front of the mural of the Battle of Southsea.

01:001874.

01:01Yeah.

01:02150 years ago.

01:04Brilliant. So tell me a little bit about the exhibition you've got here, and what's on display.

01:10So we've got a new exhibition that's been placed in the museum, with a lot more information about the battle.

01:19A lot of it taken from John Field's work from the Portsmouth paper, but a lot of it comes from our research volunteers

01:27who've been working tirelessly over the last few months putting these pieces together.

01:32And yeah, it's been a fantastic process to see it all come together.

01:37We found out a few new bits of information and corrected a few old fallacies about the battle as well, which has been good.

01:43What's the reaction been like so far?

01:46Excellent. Yeah, a lot of people come and see different bits from the temporary exhibition.

01:52We've met family members of people from years ago who actually related to the people who painted it,

01:58and also to the counsellors who were involved in the battle at the time as well.

02:02We've found that many people locally, the history of it has resonated with them,

02:07and something that they never knew about before has become a real big interest to them.

02:14So it's been fantastic seeing people rediscover that history.

02:18Revitalising a lost story of Portsmouth past.

02:21So tell me how long the exhibition will be here at the museum?

02:26Well hopefully it should be here for at least the next six months, up until summer next year

02:31when we're going to have the opening of the mural and coins on Southsea Common and Castle Road to commemorate the battle.

02:40And we want to say a big thank you to the Heritage Fund for supporting this project.

02:45It wouldn't have been possible without the players of the National Lottery, so thank you very much.