Leigh Park in the 1950s | Nostalgia

On the right is the popular Greyhound pub and then across the road the Co-op or Co-operative as it was known then.

The Co-op used to pay one of the highest dividends in the 1960s at 1s 8d in the pound, about 9p in today’s money. No doubt many of you will remember your mum’s ‘divi’ number which had to be given with every purchase.

At one time there were at least five butchers in the Parade: Dewhurst, Baxters, Coopers, London Meat Company and the Co-op, which had a separate butchery department.

In the late 1960s Park Parade was pedestrianised. In 1966 the Greywell shopping extension was built behind the buildings on the left.

Above Cooper Clift, the greengrocer on the left, was a barbers. Boys queued from the doorway up two flights of stairs to have their hair cut by one of three barbers. The owner looked like Teasie Weasie Raymond, the London showbiz hairdresser.

From the Red Lion to The Hard

There was only one man to ask about this photograph of Highland Road, Eastney – Barry Cox, who published a book of his own photographs called Portsmouth Trolleybuses.

He tells me the trolleybus is on its way from the Red Lion at Cosham to the Dockyard via South Parade Pier and Palmerston Road. I would date the picture to the early 1960s. The bus was one of a batch of 15 with 52-seat bodywork, delivered between November 1950 and March 1951.

Not just any old birthday, but his 48th

There was a time, whenever royalty celebrated a birthday, that the nation, especially Portsmouth celebrated in style.

On June 3, 1913, it was King George V’s turn to be celebrated.

Seeing as it was just his 48th birthday I cannot see what the celebrations were held for.

There was also a Fleet Review at Spithead. There seemed little reason not to have a review back in those days of the British Empire.