Listed Building: TRAM SHELTER (ADJACENT TO BLUE REEF AQUARIUM) (1387219)

II Early C20 former tram shelter, originally in Southsea Terrace, is now at Clarence Esplanade and used as a bus shelter. It was built in the 1920's by David Rowell & Co., and the base of each column is inscribed 'D Rowell and Co, Howick Place, Westminster, London S.W'. The shelter is panelled iron and glass with cast-iron column supports. DESCRIPTION: The panels are arranged in 4 bays divided by columns. Each bay has a 4 by 2 glass window above and a solid iron panel plate below, with raised ribbon band decoration on the inner side. Each column has a bell capital with leaf motif and moulded base, and the column at each end has a cast-iron finial. The slight lean-to wooden roof has ornamental cast-iron cresting, a cover of felt or lead, and is supported by ornate scroll pattern cast-iron cantilever brackets. HISTORY: In May 1865 the Landport & Southsea Tramways Company opened a single-track line from the joint London & South Western Railway and the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway station at Landport, via Portsmouth town centre, to Clarence Pier at Southsea. This was Britain's first statutory street tramway, and the line was intended to provide a connection with the Isle of Wight ferries. Other tram companies subsequently opened routes in Portsmouth, including, in 1874, the Portsmouth Street Tramways Company, and in 1878, The General Tramways Company of Portsmouth. By 1883 the Provincial Tramways Company Ltd. (Established in London in 1872), which already owned the Portsmouth Street Tramways Company, had bought the remaining two companies, and amalgamated them under the PST name. The Portsmouth Corporation Tramways Act of 1898 empowered the Corporation to purchase the lines of the Portsmouth Street Tramways Company which lay within the borough, and it exercised this option on 1 January 1901. The Portsmouth Street Tramways Company then extended its lines from the boundary of the borough, and it was not until 1924 that they ran trams into Portsmouth again. Subsequently financial losses in the corporation transport department were attributed to the tramway system, and, in 1934, the trams began to be replaced by trolleybuses. On 10 November 1936 the last tram ran, bringing the tramway era in Portsmouth to an end. The Clarence Esplanade shelter was moved from Southsea Terrace in 1999 due to vandalism in its previous location. The shelter is now located at the rear edge of the footway between the Crimean Monument and the Tourist Information Centre, Clarence Esplanade, north of the Blue Reef Aquarium. This shelter and the one at Gunwarf Quays are the only remaining tram shelters in Portsmouth. SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: This early-C20 tram shelter is of special interest for the architectural and technological qualities which are inherent in its decorative cast-iron work, its historic interest as one of the few remaining vestiges of the tram era of public transport in Portsmouth, and its rarity as a building type in a national context. It was moved in 1999 to a new location in Portsmouth where it has group value with the early-C20 lamp columns on the pavement on the south side of Clarence Esplanade (UID 474384) c.65m to the east, and the Crimean Monument (UID 474379) c.70m to the west. SOURCES http://www.petergould.co.uk/local_transport_history/fleethits/portsmouth accessed on 21st August 2006.