Gosport High Street... when it was bustling and thriving

A marvellous view along Gosport High Street with the India Arms pub on the left. Photo: Mick Cooper collection.

As I wrote a fortnight ago, Mick Cooper has loaned me a memory stick with hundreds of photographs on.

Several of you have asked for more pictures of Gosport. I was searching through and found a dozen Gosport postcard scenes.

Over the next week or so I will be putting in some memories for all of you over the water.

This photograph just about says it all about the problems with today’s shopping centres and high streets.

Taken from the old wooden bridge, here we are looking along Langstone Road towards Havant pre-1956. Picture: Ralph Cousins's collection.

There are dozens of people walking about and many private shops – and note there is no precinct.

I must admit to knowing very little about Gosport and so I am hoping readers from the town will let me know more about this photograph.

Nice to see a sailor in uniform, perhaps he is a St Vincent boy.

Can anyone tell me what Masterman & Sons, next to the hotel, traded in?

The same approach road today. It is now the road leading to Langstone Sailing Club.

Of course, this was in the days when we could park anywhere. The car on the right has an AA badge affixed to its radiator.

TREACHEROUS BRIDGE ACROSS THE HARBOUR

This is the old wooden bridge that crossed Langstone Harbour between Langstone and Halking Island until 1956. The white building in the distance is the Ship Inn.

There appears to be no street lighting or central white line, so it must have been somewhat hazardous at night and during a storm.

In latter days, with the bridge on its last legs, bus passengers had to get off and walk across the bridge to this point where they could re-board.

SCOUTS FIRST TO STEP ON NEW CROSSING

Here is the new bridge opened in September 1956, on the right.

On the left, land appears to have been reclaimed to act as a car park for Langstone Sailing Club. Denis Wills, of Bedhampton, tells me that the 1st Leigh Park Scouts were some of the first allowed across the new bridge when the group went on summer camp. A great hand-pulled wheel cart was used to take all the equipment across. The contractors of the bridge gave them permission to march across.