Legendary Portsmouth pub crawl that was a sailor’s rite of passage | Nostalgia
They used to say that Portsmouth had a pub on every corner.That may have been the way of things in the south-west corner of Portsea Island but I think the rest of the city was probably a little more sober.
I have been researching just how many drinking establishments there were and in the 1934 City of Portsmouth list of licensed premises there were 572 of which 284 were pubs. The remainder were beer houses.
Perhaps one of the most pub-inhabited locations was Queen Street. This was not surprising as HMS Victory, Royal Naval Barracks, was at one end and the main gate to the royal dockyard, as it once was, was at the other.
Turning right on leaving the barracks, sailors could drop into the Royal Naval Arms and between there and the main gate were no less than eight public houses and two beer houses.
Turning left down St James’s Street, just 100 yards down from Queen Street, were two other pubs and yet another in Bishop Street. That is 13 drinking houses before The Hard was even reached.
Along the Hard were yet a further six with another, the Ship Leopard, in Havant Street, just off The Hard.
If the sailors had not had enough by then, they could always stroll into St George’s Square where yet another five pubs and a beer house were situated. That is 26 drinking establishments all within walking distance from the barracks.
Of course there were not just sailors drinking. There were no doubt Royal Marines, fishermen, dockyard men and civilians in general who used all these pubs.
Many of these establishments existed well into the 1950s and early 1960s.
In the photograph, looking down Queen Street from the naval barracks, we see the Royal Standard on the right which was the second pub from the naval barracks, the first being the Royal Naval Arms.