Portslade
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Portslade | ||
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| Statistics | ||
| Population: | ||
| Ordnance Survey | ||
| OS grid reference: | TQ255065 | |
| Administration | ||
| District: | Brighton & Hove | |
| Region: | South East England | |
| Constituent country: | England | |
| Sovereign state: | United Kingdom | |
| Other | ||
| Ceremonial county: | East Sussex | |
| Historic county: | Sussex | |
| Services | ||
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| Fire and rescue: | {{{Fire}}} | |
| Ambulance: | South East Coast | |
| Post office and telephone | ||
| Post town: | ||
| Postal district: | BN41 | |
| Dialling code: | 01273 | |
| Politics | ||
| UK Parliament: | ||
| European Parliament: | South East England | |
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Portslade is the name of an area of the city of Brighton and Hove. Portslade Village, the original settlement a mile inland to the north was built up in the 16th Century. The arrival of the railway from Brighton in 1840 encouraged rapid development of the coastal area and, in 1896, the southern part, known as Copperas Gap was granted urban district status and renamed Portslade-by-Sea, making it distinct from Portslade Village. After World War II the district of Mile Oak was added. Today Portslade is bisected from east to west by the old A27 road between Brighton and Worthing, each part having a distinct character.
Portslade Village to the north, nestles in a valley of the South Downs and still retains its rural character with flint buildings, a village green and the small parish church of St Nicolas which is the second oldest church in the city dating from approximately 1150.
Another notable building in the village is Portslade Manor, one of the few surviving ruins of a Norman manor, built in the 12th Century it is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Foredown tower houses one of only two cameras obscura in the south of England. It is open to the public.
Portslade-by-Sea to the south, straddles the small but busy seaport harbour basin of Shoreham-by-Sea harbour and is the industrial centre of Brighton and Hove. Terraced housing dating back to the nineteenth century is interspaced with parks and allotments. Boundary Road is the main shopping area as well as being the location of the station, with direct trains to London Victoria with a journey time of about an hour.
[edit] Portslade in history
Portslade has been identified with the Roman port Novus Portus mentioned in Ptolemy's Geography of the second century AD. Drove road has been linked with the Roman road "the London to Portslade road" that passes through Patcham valley to Haywards Heath and on to Streatham in London. Roman remains and a Roman burial were found in Roman Road. The name of the town had been thought to stem from the Roman placename Portus Adurni (modern Portchester), but this is based on a misidentification of Shoreham-by-Sea as Portus Adurni by Michael Drayton in the 17th Century. Indeed the River Adur, whose mouth has moved many times due to longshore drift and erosion, was also named from this misidentification. The actual etymology of Portslade may be portus- + -ladda, way to the port, where ladda is from the Old English for way, but this is conjectural at best.
The old name Copperas Gap for Portslade by sea suggests that the coast was used for the production of copperas or green vitriol, a form of ferrous sulphate used extensively in the textile industry. The process took over six years and made use of iron pyrite rich nodules that could be found in the strata of Sussex greensand stone that emerges at this point in the coast.
A part-finished assembly hall in Portslade became one of Britain's first cinemas circa 1930 when George Coles, who became one of the Odeon chain's principal architects, adapted the original design to create an Odeon cinema.
Portslade-by-Sea was an urban district from the late 19th Century to 1974, when it became part of the borough of Hove later to become part of the city of Brighton and Hove. Portslade town hall is on Victoria Road, and is used as a venue for various functions.
