Uniformed sailors stood in the aisles and took the roof off...
If you had visited the Theatre Royal before the Covid restrictions you would have been in a vastly different auditorium to the one in this 1969 photograph from the Evening News. My mother used to sing in this theatre in the final years of the war. And in the immediate post-war years she performed there when it was packed. She remembered standing room only with crowds of sailors on their feet in uniform. She told me she got them to sing along with her and they took the roof off.
The photo I published of cars parked outside the Mystery pub were recognised by three readers, Ian Heath, Jeremy Knowles and Clive Sharman.
The first was a Ford Consul, a Zephyr or a Zodiac, produced from the late 1950s. I cannot identify the second, however I believe the third was a Wolseley saloon produced by the British Motor Corporation, also from the late 1950s/early 1960s. BMC became British Leyland.
BMC produced similar cars including the Morris Oxford and Austin Cambridge. It also made a three-litre Vanden Plas and a fourlitre R saloon with a Rolls-Royce engine! This was an automatic with a top speed of 112mph, pretty good for the ’60s. The Wolseley was mid-range and cost about £1,000, a lot back then. I say it’s a Wolseley because of the shape of the radiator and that there are only two headlights, not four as on the upmarket models.
As for the Mystery pub site, it’s been vacant since 2005 but will now be sold at auction with an estimate of £600,000 for the site. A photo from a 1959 edition of
was not correct, the according to Mike Noonan, a past chairman of the Bulwark, Albion and Centaur Association.
He says: ‘While the write-up is correct the caption probably is not. The ship is alongside in 3 Basin where she lay for six months.
‘Centaur left the builders’ yard in Belfast after commissioning on September 17, 1953, arriving in Portsmouth on October 2 carry
The cover of one of Paul Newell’s two new books. ing out trials en route. The ship was then taken in hand by Portsmouth dockyard from October 16 to fit the angled flight deck. Work complete, the ship next went to sea on April 26, 1954. I suggest the photo was taken some time in that period.’
On the HMS Centaur web page it says she was in dockyard hands from 1956-1958 undergoing extensive modernisation with the angled flight deck added so the picture comes from about January 1959 perhaps.
Author Paul Newell has two books about Portsmouth ready for the Christmas market. The first is Victorian Portsmouth 1837-1859, the other A Victorian Portrait of Charles Dickens. Both are available from New To You Bookshop, High Street, Cosham.
Last Friday's picture of the Mystery pub at Somers Town, Portsmouth, with the cars now identified by readers.