Old Portsmouth pub remembered | Nostalgia

He spent a short period of his early career as an engine cleaner and fireman before being called up for national service where he served in the RAF. He never returned to the railway.

David died five years ago but his thousands of photographs have been used in many books, especially the Rambling Railwayman series edited by Geoff Burch.

Geoff has now collated hundreds of the photographs and put them on a two-DVD set available from [email protected] at £14.95, plus £2 postage and packing.

The set consists of photographs from the Guildford shed, Eastleigh shed, Guildford to Horsham branch pre-1967, London Area, West of Woking, and the Barry, South Wales, scrapyard where hundreds of redundant locomotives were stored.

The Mid-Hants Railway, Bluebell Railway and pictures from other areas are also included. All have captions to set the scene.

If you have an interest in railways before 1967 when steam was coming to an end, plus the railways after that period, then this superb DVD will appeal.

• The Barrack Cellars pub stood on the corner of Eastney Road and Henderson Road, opposite Eastney bus depot in Portsmouth.

It was, no doubt, used by the hundreds of drivers, conductors and other transport workers at the depot. Within 100 yards or so of the pub were another half-dozen pubs, most now gone.

Former Pompey player Jack Smith, who played for the club in the 1920s and ’30s and took the pub when he finished playing.

I believe the pub was demolished in the early 1970s when the junction was widened. Perhaps the scaffolding in this 1972 picture shows the beginning of its demise?

• The lovely final photograph is from George Barrett in which we see competitors in an 880-yard (half-mile) race. The caption says it was ‘Dockyard Sports’ but does that mean the dockyard had its own sports club or was it simply an annual sports day for dockyard workers?

Where might the race have taken place? Maybe the Pitt Street track? But as the photo was taken on July 1, 1933, it had all changed by the time I knew of it.

From the left we have Barrett, Stone, Stevens and Smith. The caption gives the winner as AC Stone ASD; runner-up C Hoskins MCD, and third FC Smith SEED. I assume the acronyms were dockyard departments?