Pub with odd name wiped out in a German air raid

As you might have guessed over the years, my favourite format in photography are then and now scenes around Portsmouth.
Devastation at the Hard. The scene on December  22, 1940 after the Bedford in Chase took a direct hit.Devastation at the Hard. The scene on December  22, 1940 after the Bedford in Chase took a direct hit.
Devastation at the Hard. The scene on December 22, 1940 after the Bedford in Chase took a direct hit.

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.

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

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