Local Legends and Stories

Tales and traditions from Cosham's past

Every community has its stories, and Cosham is no exception. The district's long history, its wartime experiences, its Victorian transformation and the presence of Portsdown Hill have all generated tales, traditions and local legends that are passed down through families and neighbourhoods.

Wymering Manor, the oldest building in Portsmouth, has accumulated its share of ghost stories over the centuries. A building that has stood for nearly a thousand years, serving as a manor house, a farmhouse and a youth hostel, inevitably gathers legends. Visitors and occupants over the years have reported unexplained sounds, cold spots and a general atmosphere of age and mystery. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the manor's thick stone walls and shadowy rooms have an undeniable presence.

The Portsdown Hill forts, built in the 1860s and nicknamed Palmerston's follies, have their own stories. The underground tunnels and magazines of the forts are atmospheric and, in some cases, reportedly haunted. Fort Widley in particular has been the subject of paranormal investigations and ghost hunting events. The combination of military history, underground spaces and Victorian architecture makes the forts natural settings for tales of the uncanny.

The Blitz stories of the Second World War are more firmly grounded in fact but no less powerful. Older residents and their descendants recount tales of sheltering in the Portsdown Hill tunnels during air raids, of houses destroyed and lives lost, of community resilience in the face of bombing. The story of Fort Southwick's role as the D-Day naval headquarters is one of the most significant war stories associated with any community in England.

The transformation of Cosham from a village to a suburb is itself a story worth telling. Within a single generation in the late Victorian period, a rural community of farms and cottages became a busy suburb of terraced houses and railway commuters. The speed of the change must have been bewildering for those who lived through it.

Local pubs have always been places where stories are told, embellished and passed on. The George on Portsdown Hill, with its views and its history, has no doubt been the setting for many an evening of tall tales and local gossip over the years.