Memories & Recollections - Letter from Chris Hammond
Chris Hammond and his family once owned much of the land that now comprises Daedalus. Below is a letter from Chris Hammond which tells you about his personal connections to the site.
'My grandfather, Isaac Hammond, moved down from Hillingdon, Middlesex in the late 1890s to run a nursery at Hill Head for Geo. Monro of Covent Garden Market, who had taken the nursery on in a settlement of a bad debt.
They built Cliff House, the first house tobe built on Cliff Rd. Hill Head, and my father Frank Hammond born in 1895, went to school at Wykeham Hall, which became the Wardroom of Daedalus.
In those days a journey to Portsmouth involved a pony and a cart to Lee railway station, train to Gomer, and then a tram to Gosport ferry, an all day outing.
During the First World War my father, an engineer, served in the RN Salvage Section, and one of the ships they worked on I believe was called the ‘Narrowgansit’ [sic], an American flat bottomed river ship which went aground on Bembridge ledge. When they pulled her off, the flat bottom which had pushed in, had sprang out, firing rivets around the engine room.
He also worked on ships sunk in Liverpool docks, where they used railway locomotives to right capsized liners which had rolled over due to being flooded when putting their fires out.
After the war in 1920, my father left the Navy, and together with my grandfather they bought land to the east of Stubbington Lane, alongside the then Lee aerodrome, an all grass airfield.
At that time Lee handled a lot of seaplanes, which were taken to the old slipway, (by the paddling pool/play area) on Marine Parade West, where they were lowered by crane prior to launching.
It was only later in the 1930s that the larger concrete slipway was created for launching and recovering seaplanes and flying boats such as the Walrus amphibian and the Seafox float planes.
The float planes were fitted with additional wheels for rolling into the sea, where wading seamen removed the wheels before the engines were run up to take them out to sea. On their return the wheels were refitted, and a large motor winch at the head of the slipway winched them up the slipway and across the road while the police stopped the traffic.
A rescue launch was always stationed off the slipway when flying was taking place, but returned to Portsmouth over night after some were lost in overnight storms.
During this time the pier at Lee Tower burnt down, and while the tower, cinema and ballroom were left intact until after the Second World War, the pier was never rebuilt. The cinema used to be packed throughout the war, as one of the only forms of entertainment, and despite warnings being displayed on the screen, people rarely left the building until the film ended.
Returning to the airfield, it was grass until the late thirties until just before 1939 – 1945 war, when the runways were built. This localised the flying to more defined areas in line with the tarmac, as up till then the areas were moved regularly to save wear on the grass, and due to the unreliability of aircraft engines in the early years, several crash landed over the hedges into the surrounding fields, especially when night flying.
One of the most notorious incidents involved 181 Stubbington Lane, where a biplane crashed at night into the house where the pilot was living, and he climbed out unhurt and lifted his child from its cot in the upstairs bedroom, luckily there was no fire despite the spilt fuel.
With war becoming a threat in the mid 1930s my grandfather received a visit from a naval captain, who asked if he would consider selling some land to the Navy so they could enlarge the drome. My grandfather declined, and was told that in case the captain would return within a week with a compulsory purchase order, so my grandfather sold. The nursery was then moved to the west side of Stubbington Lane, and was enlarged to some 45 acres of arable land, including three acres of glass for cucumbers and chrysants.
Creating the larger airfield meant that the original Manor Way which ran up to Marks Rd. Stubbington, was closed at its northern half, and rerouted to Newgate Lane to get to Fareham. Also Ratsom’s lane, which ran east-west across the drome was closed from the rifle range at Stubbington Lane end over to Manor Way.
At the beginning of the war, my family were still living at what is now 145 Stubbington Lane, alongside the airfield fence, and we could observe a lot of the wartime activities. A series of blast mounds were built to protect the planes should a bomb drop and it was then that the infamous pipe bombs were dug beneath the runways to disable them in case the enemy invaded.
Due to being in a reserved occupation during the war, my father was not called up, but with the staff of the nursery, they formed a part time auxiliary fire service, manned at night, and utilising a private Austin car and later the nursery lorry for towing the trailer fire pump, with the crew sleeping at night in a wooden cabin on the nursery.
Daedalus was severely attacked twice during the war by bombers, the first early on was by dive bombers in the middle of the day, an all out attack which resulted in the main hangers being damaged, as well as numerous houses on Marine Parade West. At that time the nursery AFS attended, puncturing nearly every tyre as they drove over glass to the damaged hangers.
The second attack was six o’clock on a warm spring evening, and I was being bathed by my mother when we first heard this aircraft coming in from the west, low, and without any warnings, just machine guns opening up, and then bombs.
It appeared to be a lone effort, as only one plane attacked, and he was so low that a lot of bombs did not go off. The next day my father nearly had a fit, as the bomb disposal unit tried to detonate the unexploded bombs in a field next to the nursery glass by tying a long rope on, and then towing them away. Luckily they did not explode.
1943 saw these enormous concrete caissons being built on the Salterns beach at Hill Head, which were moved out and sunk off Lee slipway, eventually to be moved out to form the Mulberry Harbour soon after the D-Day landings.
In 1944 the whole of the Stubbington and Gosport area was sealed off, and entry was only by residential permit, whilst the Solent began filling up with shipping, and hundreds and hundreds of army vehicles were parked al ong every road side. Then overnight on the 5th June all the aircraft suddenly were painted black and white stripes on their wings and fuselage, and on the 6th we knew it was D-Day, with thousands of aircraft streaming overhead.'
