Mount Pleasant

The next stop on my 11 April walk was Mount Pleasant, the area tucked away between Bevois Valley and Northam. It’s so tiny, more or less just one road and an industrial estate, that the name doesn’t even appear on the map. Nice as it sounds, the name Mount Pleasant usually has ironic origins and Mount Pleasant in Southampton is no exception. At risk of offending the locals, it is about as far as it’s possible to get from a mount — being at sea level right on the edge of the River Itchen — and it isn’t exactly pleasant either. In fact it’s right on the edge of Southampton’s most notorious red light district. Having said that, the little terraced houses are lovely and the area has a very interesting history. This was what I’d come to explore.

Most of that history, or at least the part I was interested in, centred around the school. Sadly, the little playground next to the cut way between Imperial Road and Mount Pleasant Road has been closed and let to run to ruin. The sign I spotted last time I came this way said this was because of anti social behaviour. Having worked on the industrial estate many years ago, I have to say this isn’t much of a surprise. It seems a terrible shame for local children though.

The houses are typical victorian terraces, probably of the two up, two down variety, with downstairs bay windows and postage stamp front gardens. They’re similar to the ones on Radcliffe Road on the other side of the railway line, and those in the surrounding roads for that matter. In the 1940’s they used to line either side of the road, but those on the school side have been knocked down and replaced with industrial units now. Opposite the school and beyond the bend in the road, is a row of garages belonging to the houses in Denzil Avenue, the road behind. As far as I can see from the old OS maps, this has always been the case.

Next to the cut way and defunct playground is the old school house. A stone on the eaves tells me it was built in 1897, a year after the school. It’s a much larger and nicer house than all the others in the area, possibly to be attractive to a head master and his family. When war broke out in 1939, it wasn’t the school master living there though. Kelly’s Directories tell me it was Herbert S Hurst and the 1939 register tells me he was the caretaker.

The school is another of those beautiful Victorian red brick buildings, complete with a rather ornate clock tower. It was originally called The Mount Pleasant Board School and was designed by architect John Henry Blizard. The builders were local firm H Stevens and Company. Back then, the River Itchen was much closer to the school than it is now. This meant the site was liable to flooding, and for that reason, the construction included an extensive basement area.

As a child, my father lived on the other side of the level crossing, in Radcliffe Road, and he and his brothers would have gone to this school. He was born in 1913, so, luckily for him, he never had to take shelter in the basement. For the local children and residents though, those basements would have been a very familiar place in 1940 and 1941. By then, enough land had been reclaimed on the other side of the railway line that flooding was no longer a danger, so the cellars were used as communal air raid shelters. There was enough room for all the staff and pupils of the school if the raid happened during the day, and there were bunkbeds for locals to sleep in if the raid happened at night.

The school was much more than an air raid shelter though. The underground cellars were large enough to be used for other purposes and it became Mount Pleasant First Aid Station, the headquarters for civilian ambulances and an ARP Control Centre, complete with nurses, doctors, a canteen and telephones. In the playground, the ambulances lined up next to the bike shed. Beside them a single decker bus had been converted into a mobile operating theatre. Parts of the cellar were even used as a mortuary and a decontamination unit.

Looking at the school today it’s hard to imagine, but, as the First Aid Station played a large part in my work in progress, that was exactly what I tried to do. The cellars are still there. I’m told there are still signs of what they were once used for. Children’s drawings can still be seen on the walls where their bunk beds used to be and there are signs too. Sadly, asbestos was discovered in them some years ago so there is no chance to visit them. I will have to content myself with imagining.

There was one more thing I wanted to look at before I went home. The school wasn’t the only thing to feature in my work in progress. A little further along the road is Mount Pleasant Crossing. Unlike the level crossing I’d encountered earlier on Adelaide Road, this is no small inconvenience. Four railway lines run across it and there are five or more trains every hour passing through. The chances of getting stuck at the gates for a very long wait are huge, at least if you happen to be driving. Luckily, I was on foot and there is a footbridge, because the gates were down as I approached, and a long queue of traffic had already built up.

I was actually rather pleased about this, because I wanted to watch the operation of the crossing and the trains going past. Without giving any spoilers, I can’t say exactly why, but suffice to say, it played an integral part in the plot I was mulling over in my head. Smiling to myself, I climbed the steps of the bridge and stood waiting for the train. The wait gave me a good opportunity to see exactly what I could see from there, or rather, what my character could have seen. I was pleased to see that there was an excellent view of the gates and the rails.

The train eventually arrived. It was a goods train, but, as is so often the case, there was another train right behind it. Of course they were not steam trains as they would have been in 1941, and the gates were a little different back then too, but I learned a lot all the same. In fact, I’d decided I needed to adjust my plot. Of course, this was one of the main points of my walk so I didn’t mind too much.

The poor motorists were in for a long wait. They often are here. When both trains had passed and the gates had begun to open, I descended the steps to the other side of the railway and began to head for home. As I walked across Northam Bridge, past all the new flats on the site of the old television studios — which was the Plaza Cinema back in 1941— I turned my plot problem over in my mind. It wasn’t insurmountable, but it would take some creative thinking.

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