No privacy for those lucky few who escaped nuclear holocaust

Within what is now Leigh Park Gardens was the magnificently Gothic Leigh Park House.

It was demolished in what can only be described as an act of wanton vandalism by Portsmouth Corporation in 1959.

I recently found this photograph in the archive of a magnificent magnolia growing alongside the house and I wondered who the man was underneath.

I contacted The News gardening expert Brian Kidd as I knew he had trained at the nurseries at Leigh Park as a youth.

Brian believes he was the last owner of the house, a Major Fitzwygram.

Oddly enough his sister moved out of the house to Haslemere in Surrey and a building called Leigh House.

If you want a good day out you ought to visit the diving museum at Stokes Bay, Lee-on-the-Solent.

It is a marvellous experience, but what the building also contains is the room pictured here which you will find at the end of a corridor.

The Palmerston Folly, which houses the museum, fell out of use after the Second World War but was later to be used as a nuclear fall-out shelter for local dignitaries if the worst did happen one day.

It was contained in what was the cordite chamber.

The very public lavatory was built completely in the open at the top of the passageway.

I suppose that if you made it safe from a nuclear attack, going to the loo with others standing around would not have been too much of a problem!

Can you remember when Southsea funfair was the place to visit and the waltzer was the ride all the lads wanted to go on?

If the attendant spun the cars while the whole contraption was in motion you could be very sick, especially if you had had a few pints.

The cost was six old pence a go but five tickets could be purchased for two shillings – that’s just 10p in today’s money.