2 Montague Road was where Mum, Dad, and Valerie were living when I was born in 1950. We can't say exactly when they moved there, nor exactly when we moved out, but it was in the period 1949 to 1951. When we tried to see what the house looked like we were surprised to find that it wasn't there any more. It's the only house in Montague Road that has disappeared. So we dug a bit deeper and this page is the result. It has a brief history of the house and a little about some of the people that lived there. And at the end it offers an explanation for why the house no longer exists.

1900 - 1910

These two maps show Montague Road in 1895 and 1905. There was only a nursery and glasshouses in 1895, and by 1905 all the houses have been built, including those on London Road.  So, number 2 (shaded green) was built sometime between those dates.

But we can be more precise than that. If we examine Kelly's street directories each year between those dates they reveal that the houses on the north side of Montague Road were built first, starting at the end nearest to London Road. The building work continued all the way along the north side, and then back along the south side moving  towards London Road. Number 2 was in fact the last to be built, and it first gets a mention in 1903, meaning that it was probably built in 1902.

The houses in Montague Road were all of a similar style - what became known as stone bay and forecourt. Downstairs they had a kitchen/scullery and three living rooms with an outside WC. Upstairs there were three bedrooms and a bathroom. Very well appointed for that era. The houses were sometimes occupied by a single family, but in many more cases the houses were sub let, mainly as two floors, but sometimes as individual bedrooms.

As you would expect the occupants were generally working class and servicemen, particularly Royal Navy and dockyard workers. The earliest occupants between 1903 and 1909 were William Hatherley, Frededrick Rumsey, and Thomas  Jackson. We know next to nothing about them. One small thing we found in the Portsmouth Evening News is that Frederick Rumsey had a son also called Frederick who passed his first piano playing examination in 1903, tutored by an Edward Buckle - who turns up later on.

1910 - 1920

The first occupant that we know something about is George Henry Roberts and his family who lived in the house from about 1910 to 1912. George was retired from the Royal Navy, which he joined as a boy in 1873. When he retired in 1900 he was a Chief Petty Officer. It's not clear after that how he made his living. The 1911 census suggests that he was a cycle agent but whenever else his occupation is mentioned it's always retired RN Warrant Officer. As it happens he was thrown out of the navy for drunkenness! The family moved to Cowplain in the early 1920s and George died there in 1925.

From 1913 - 1918 the house was occupied by James William Kimber. He was a blacksmith working in the Dockyard. His wife was a niece of Edward Buckle the piano teacher that we mentioned earlier.

Edward Buckle graduated from Trinity College of Music in the 1880s playing the piano and organ. He appears from time to time in the Portsmouth Evening News playing the piano in various performances in Portsmouth. His future wife Philadelphia Jago also performed as a singer at the same time as Edward. He was also the organist in St Lukes church and All Saints church. 

Edward taught piano and organ at several locations in Portsmouth, one of which was at 2 Montague Road for a couple of years in 1915 and 1916. Either he or James Kimber probably rented the whole house and sub let to the other. Edward didn't actually live in 2 Montague Road, he just taught piano and organ probably downstairs. He lived in a cottage near Emsworth with his family.  There are many reports of his pupils' successes at the Albert Hall, achieving awards from Trinity College of music. He continued to teach pupils for the Trinity College examinations right up until his death in 1944, at the age of 83.

1920 - 1930

Miss Edith Angell appears as the occupant in street directories for 1921 to 1926. She may even have been there longer than that, we don't have any records after 1926.. She was another pupil of Edward Buckle and under his tutelage she passed her Trinity College piano examination with honours in 1916. It's possible that she lived in 2 Montague Road as a result of her connection to Edward Buckle, perhaps taking over his tenancy when he moved. She is yet another person who disappears from the records after that.

1930 - 1940

We know very little about the early thirties, but there was a Mrs Garcia living there in 1931 when she advertised for a maid.

Later there was a George Harvey and his wife Alice, who left for the Isle of Wight by about 1938.

The 1939 Register gives us a good view of the families living there. The 1939 Register was a complete record of everybody living in Great Britain on 29th September 1939. It recorded their names, addresses, dates of birth and occupations. It was used to produce identity cards and ration books.

In 2 Montague Road there were two households, probably one upstairs and one downstairs.

The first household was James Lynch, his wife Bridget and their baby daughter Marguerita, and Bridget's brother Patrick O'Meara who was in the Royal Navy. James worked in the Dockyard as an armament fitter.

The other household in 1939 was a family called Smith, originally from Gosport. There was an elderly lady called Emily Smith and her son Harold who was a Petty Officer in the Royal Navy at HMS Excellent, the gunnery school on Whale Island. They had a lodger/housekeeper with them by the name of Agnes Hollidge. Agnes married the following year. We found an item in the Portsmouth Evening News involving Harold Smith in 1935. He gave evidence at an enquiry held at the RN Hospital Haslar into the death of a seaman on the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous. The seaman had inadvertently walked into the propeller of an aircraft, which Harold witnessed as he was holding the wingtip of another aircraft.

Mum, Dad, and Valerie moved there probably some time during 1949. Much later Mum told Valerie that we rented rooms - probably the upstairs or downstairs with a shared bathroom. And that the other family were the Clarks - Lew and Nancy. We stayed in contact with them after the move to Leigh Park, we knew them as Uncle Lew and Auntie Nance.

1950 - 1951

On 12th  July 1951 a new department store opened on the corner of London Road and Montague Road - McIlroys.  This cutting is from the Portsmouth Evening News.

You can see from the map below that the McIlroys store occupies a much larger area than the original two houses that were on the site in the 1905 map.  Number 2 Montague Road has disappeared, the first house in Montague Road is number 4.

It seems likely that 2 Montague Road and some houses and shops in London Road would have been compulsorily purchased and demolished to make space for building McIlroys department store. Which means that we might well have been the last occupiers.  We would probably have been forced out before the end of 1950. Maybe that gave us some priority over others in the waiting list for a council house. The picture below shows numbers 4 and 6 today, with the back of the McIlroys building looming over them.