Tales of Three Churches

 Apologies for re-blipping this day and for the length of the write up - but, in hindsight, on the drive home, I decided to record more of the day. 
On the trail of Mr P's ancestors we spent a serendipitous day chatting to knowledgeable local people in three churches.-
1. Samuel was baptised in 1790 in St Marys, Portsea. We went into the church in the main blip, found the font, were about to take photos when a member of the staff explained that the tudor church Samuel had been baptised in on this site was demolished in the early 1800s, and she doesn't know what happened to the font, it might be in St Albans!. A new church was built and then demolished 50 years later because an unknown benefactor wanted an even  bigger and better church- the one in the Blip. The benefactor turned out to be W. H. Smith MP, P.C., First Lord of the Admiralty and founder of  the newsagents chain. Portsmouth was bombed heavily during WWII and the reason this church is still standing is because its very high tower was used by the Germans to guide them in. 
2. My research had revealed that the same Samuel , by now a shipwright, had married his wife Mary in 1826 in Portsmouth Cathedral. That's grand for a shipwright we thought , but he did live round the corner.  However chatting to the staff inside we discovered that in 1826 the church was just the modest St Thomas parish church  that now comprises the old right hand end (in the extra) of the cathedral.  Portsmouth became a city in 1926 and needed a cathedral. St Thomas was chosen and gradually extended over the years. Finally in 1990 they finished the cathedral as it is today.  Luckily the old bit is still as it was in Samuel and Mary's' day so we could take photos of the aisle they walked up. 
3, Samuel's son Samuel ( a grocer)  married his wife Eliza in 1855 in the church of All Saints which was closed to visitors. We spotted the janitor slipping in a side door and he invited us in. The church is now in a very built up and urban part of the city on Commercial Rd. Mr janitor very enthusiastically (having moved from London very recently to start this new job) showed us a painting of how the church looked in 1860. (extra of Mr P with the painting) The aisle inside is the same so we could well imagine Sam and Eliza on their wedding day. 

We took photos of the houses they lived in from 1841 to 1911 , where not destroyed in the bombing and tried to find the location of their graves but the lady in the cemetery office has a backlog of queries and was not prepared to bump us to the top of the queue. We'll have to come back another day.