Portswood Lodgewas built in c.1800 for Walter Taylor whose family ran a factory at Woodmill for the production of blocks for the Royal Navy. It stood on the west side of Portswood Road almost opposite the junction with St Denys Road, the grounds extending back to what is now Brookvale Road. In the mid 19th century the house came into the possession of a Captain Abbott, after whom Abbotts Road is named, and its name was changed to Abbott’s Park. In 1875 the house was acquired by Walter Perkins who extended the estate to the west and renamed it Portswood House, the original building of that name having been demolished twenty years previously. Perkins also made some structural changes, including the addition of bay windows which gave the house a post-Georgian appearance. During World War One the house was used by the Red Cross for making clothes for troops. It was demolished in 1923.
Portswood Lodge
Portswood Lodge as the venue for the Royal Agricultural Show in July 1844. Engraving from the Illustrated London News of 27 July 1844
Portswood Lodge×
Portswood House (Formerly Portswood Lodge)
A photograph of the Perkins family at the rear of Portswood House, formerly Portswood Lodge, c.1900
Portswood House (Formerly Portswood Lodge)×
see also
Further reading:
Stories of Southampton Streets, by A. G. K. Leonard, p39-46. (HS/h)
Lost Houses of Southampton, by Jessica Vale. (HS/i)
‘The Country Houses of Southampton’,// by Jessica Vale in Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, volume 39, 1983, p176, 182, 184. (HS/i)
Southampton Occasional Notes, by ‘Townsman’, p52-53. (HS/h)
Highfield: a Village Remembered, by John Edgar Mann, p11-12, 39-40. (HS/h)
‘Southampton’s Tale of Two Portswood Houses’, by Christine Clearkin, in Hampshire, Vol. 48, No. 10, August 2008, p50-52. (H/y)
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