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PORTSWOOD: About the area |
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Monday, 21 May 2007 |
 This is Portswood
PORTSWOOD is a community of more than 15,000 people who live north of
Southampton’s city centre on the south coast of the UK. As well as
those of us who live here, hundreds more visitors, and businesses are
connected to this place every day through the myriad of shops, music
venues, pubs, places of worship, green spaces, schools and community
facilities that we share.
 Portswood life radiates around its central shopping street,
properly known by the glamorous name of Portswood Broadway. Famous for
the rich pickings in its abundant charity shops, the street also boasts
a busy branch library, post office, bingo hall, doctors surgery and
police station alongside high street retail names like Waitrose,
Woolworths and Boots, and thriving independent stores such as October
Books, Portswood Hardware and Portswood Cycles.
 We are a highly mixed community: students and academics from
the nearby University of Southampton rub shoulders with long
established local british-asian families; Portswood has been a popular
destination for recent newcomers from eastern Europe; we have a high
density of care homes and other housing for older people, and many of
Southampton’s highly sought after Victorian family houses are
here too, alongside the listed estates designed by architect Herbert
Collins.
 And we are growing fast, a fact which can cause some
discomfort amongst local people: houses are being converted to multi-occupancy HMOs and
new buildings are going up on every brownfield site. Larger
developments are on the cards too, on the old Wickes site in Portswood
Road, and on the First Bus depot (planning permission allowing).
 The local authority ward boundary of Portswood takes in St
Denys right down to the river, which local people would not see as part
of Portswood, but leaves out Lodge Road, which most certainly is.
To
those of us who live and work here, we know what Portswood is about: we
know we are in Portswood when we are watching a band at the Talking
Heads, or even at The Brook. We are still connected to Portswood when
we are in the leafy conservation areas off Brookvale Road, when we are
up around the University campus, on The Common or shopping in Bevois
Valley.
This is Portswood – and you are very welcome.
January 2008
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