I Haven’t been in to our local library (The Gosport Discovery Centre) for quite a while now. I decided to go in today, as I wanted to do a little bit of research on Rowner Church St Mary the Virgin. I had looked at the Wikipedia page, and that does give you some information, but I thought I might find out a bit more if I went to the library.
I knew that the library had a big section on local history, especially Naval. I must admit that I hadn’t expected to find such a well stocked item on Gosport & the surrounding area. Having said that I was looking for items on the Rowner St Mary’s but could only find two rather slim smaller than A5 pamphlets, but they were both very useful, containing lots of information, and they should provide more than enough for what I need, but they also gave a couple of pointers for just that little bit extra investigation. This is in contrast to the amount of information that was there about the Alverstoke St Mary’s of which there was quite simply books and books of it.
The whole point of this though, is that I thoroughly enjoyed the hour or so that I spent in the library. Of course, like the Internet, you get taken in different directions. To give you an example, this morning we went to a small but very nice art exhibition in the Gosport Gallery, featuring pictures of Gosport in times past (the 1970’s back). Some of the pictures were incredibly detailed and of scenes to locations that no longer exist. One example of which is Forton Prison – I didn’t know there’d been one.
So, back to the library, and one of the books I looked at was the story of the American Revolutionaries that were imprisoned in Forton Jail between 1777 and 1783. Would these be classed as POW’s? Or possibly traitors? Anyhow, that’ll be something to look in to a bit. It was a very pleasant hour, and I anticipate more of them.
Bills Posts 