Pub with odd name wiped out in a German air raid

Devastation at the Hard. The scene on December 22, 1940 after the Bedford in Chase took a direct hit.

As you might have guessed over the years, my favourite format in photography are then and now scenes around Portsmouth.

But here, for a change, I have two ‘then and then’ photographs taken at the same spot.

In the black and white photo we see the scene at The Hard, Portsea, the morning after a pub on the corner of The Hard and Clock Street took a direct hit in the blitz on the city.

The unusually-named Bedford in Chase was a favourite with sailors and dockyardmen alike, but after the night of December 22/23, 1940, it remained no more.

Trolleybus at the war-torn Hard, Portsea alongside the site of the former Bedford in Chase pub

Seven people sheltering in the pub’s cellar were killed including Ivy Burton, 41, and her 16-year-old daughter Barbara.

In the colour picture from David Bowler’s great encyclopaedia Portsmouth Trolleybuses, we see a trolleybus passing the site of the Bedford in Chase some 20 years after the pub was destroyed.

The city’s non-polluting trolleybuses came to an end in 1963 to be taken over in later years by diesel buses with all their pollutants.