The following is an extract from the World War One novel, Mudlark (2005) by John Sedden, and is quoted with the kind permission of the author. The novel centres on Reg and Jimmy, the titular mudlark children of the novel who dive for coins and other miscellaneous treasures in the mud of Portsmouth harbour. The following extract features a rare escape from the city to the iconic viewpoint of Portsdown Hill:

A day on the hill was our summer holiday, away from the streets of Portsea. We never went any further. The sea to the south and the hill in the north were the two boundaries between Portsmouth and everywhere else in the world.

But the hill was now a training camp for new recruits to Kitchener’s Army as well as the thousands of regular soldiers who were waiting to embark for France and fight the Hun. Flapping above our camp, the Portsmouth Chums Battalion flag reminded us of who we were. I wasn’t about to forget.

For as far as you could see, to the east and west, hundreds of white bell tents were spotting the slopes, like mushrooms waiting to be picked. Wisps of smoke showed where fires were burning, food was being cooked or horses shod. One day the mushrooms were there, and then they would be gone. Then, overnight, new ones would appear in their place, fresh and ripe.

Born and bred in Portsmouth, John Sadden (aka Sedden) attended Milton Junior Boys’ School and Southern Grammar School for Boys which at this point in its complex history (1946–63) was located on the present site of Portsmouth College because its original site (on land known as ‘the Wilderness’ between Victoria Road North and Fawcett Road, had been damaged during WWII. Leaving at sixteen, he worked at a variety of different jobs before returning to full-time education as a mature student at Portsmouth Polytechnic (now the University of Portsmouth) in the days when higher education was encouraged and supported by grants and there were no tuition fees.

John gained a first class honours degree and qualified as a teacher before working in public, education and other libraries and qualifying as a chartered librarian. He is now the part-time archivist at the Portsmouth Grammar School. As John Sadden, he has written and compiled many local history books, including Gosport from Old Photographs, Portsmouth Through Time, The Portsmouth Book of Days, and Portsmouth: In Defence of the Realm. His wonderful novel, Mudlark, published by Puffin under a thinly-disguised pseudonym in 2005, draws brilliantly and inventively on his extensive research into the social history of Portsmouth during the First World War.

If you have any comments, queries, or suggestions about the map entries, please contact the Map Director: mark.frost@port.ac.uk