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Portsdown
Tunnels
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by Bob Hunt
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Home Page
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If
you're stuck
inside a search frame or can't
see
the menu on the left then click here
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Site
created:
Last
update: |
25
August 2001
28 February 2023 |
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Important, please note
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It
was
observed on the 29th of March 2025, while trying to settle an argument
about the fuel pipelines that the Portsdown Tunnels website had gone
missing. With Bob's last update left intact below this was a somewhat
worrying revelation. We have since learned that, unfortunateley, he
likeley passed away at the end of last year. The update on the 28th of
Feb was most likely the last.
A little digging showed that although the domain remained registered,
the site had gone along with all DNS records and content. The site has
been a favourite of myself (Richard) and others for many, many years
and the loss of the site, its history and stories would be a massive
loss to the community. An afternoon of work and the site was recovered
from the dustbin of history and re-hosted with new, but similar domain
names on our own servers. Thus it will remain here for as long as we
are able to keep it here.
The recovery process may not be perfect and I'll have to take time and
root out any error as well as content that can't really remain out of
respect for Bob
To be clear, this is a mirror, no claim is being made on content and
for now, the only changes that have been/will be made are hosting and
useability related. It may be that as the whole site is built in a very
old frontpage version that we move over to wordpress later.
You'll find how this was done below in the major updates and an update from me there too.
If you want to contact me, you knew Bob, or you can shed some further light on things please visit my company facebook page and drop us a line. Or you can email us at information@portsdown-tunnels.org
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Please note that, due to my ill heath, this website is now closed
to all incoming emails and correspondence.
I hope this is only temporary and that normality can be
resumed in the near future. I will keep the site running for as long as I can.
Thanks to everyone for their contributions and support. |
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Latest major updates
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(for minor updates click the button above) |
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This site & the author
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Welcome to my Portsdown Tunnels website. I have lived in Portsmouth UK all my
life, and have been interested in Portsdown and what lies underneath it since I was 8 years old. I was amazed to find that
this subject had virtually no other presence on the internet - or
the library - especially when you look at
what has been documented for other UK cities. (See my links
page). I am not an archaeologist, but it seemed odd to me that more was
known about a long barrow from 2000BC than a World War II deep
tunnel shelter, hence Portsdown Tunnels was born. The website
is now into its 23rd year and contains over 800 photos, 190 pages
and has received over 1 million hits - the hit counter stopped working
years ago, and I really can't be bothered to fix it.
Although this site is primarily concerned with underground Portsdown, it
also includes above ground sites and events which have tended to be overlooked
in the past, or which are poorly documented.
This is a one man show, I - Bob Hunt - do the lot,
from research to web authoring. The site's annual budget is £0.00
(pounds sterling - (€0)). I am now retired, and live in Paulsgrove on the southern slopes of Portsdown,
Portsmouth, UK. more
details
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Information sources
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Some of the information presented here is from
memory, both mine and others, along with research at the Portsmouth
City Records Office, the Portsmouth Central Reference Library, and
the National Archives at Kew. I have established many significant contacts through
email who have provided tremendous help.
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Get in touch
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If you have any comments,
contributions or questions, then please email
me, even if it's just to give an opinion of this site. No matter how slim your contribution or experience of
Portsdown may seem, get in touch with me. What may seem irrelevant to you, could
be just the lead I'm looking for. All emails are guaranteed a reply, usually
within 48 hours.
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The future
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This website
is updated regularly, so come back now and again to check for new
content. I try to produce a major addition (see the table at the top
of this page) every year, whilst minor updates (see the button at the top of
this page) take place frequently.
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Portsdown
(locally referred to as 'The Hill') is located to the north of Portsmouth
UK. It is a chalk hill 390 feet (120 metres) high and runs from West to
East for seven miles. Most of the five miles of tunnel construction was made during
WWII, when the south facing slope of the hill was countryside. Since then residential
housing has been built on a large part of it, forming the housing estates of Wymering and
Paulsgrove. See the site locations
and the about Portsdown pages for more details. There are numerous chalk pits on
the hill, all of them no longer
worked. The two major ones were at Paulsgrove and Wymering.
On top of Portsdown are
five Victorian forts and a
redoubt, collectively known as
the Palmerston Forts. These are quite often featured in this website, either as landmarks
or as featured subjects. I have not included the communication and magazine
tunnels originally built under these forts, unless they have been used for some
other purpose at a later date. Details
of them are already well documented.
Also on top of Portsdown are several underground water reservoirs,
and although they have potentially interesting surface features, they are not
included in this website along with telecomm, gas, electricity
and water conduits unless they have some special significance.
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This
website was constructed using Microsoft FrontPage 2000/3 and
is
designed to be viewed at a resolution of
800 x 600 or above,
using any browser, but
Firefox is
recommended.
Active X and cookies are not used by this site.
It
is best if JavaScript is enabled.
You
can navigate using the menu on the left which will always be present.
Alternatively,
click on the 'Site Index' on this menu and a
list
of every topic will be available.
All
hypertext links are underlined, and will turn red if the cursor is passed over
them.
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