SNCR 2008 PORTSMOUTH AREA, 25-26-27 July

Thursday 24th.   Early arrivers met up in the evening at The Ship Inn at Langstone for a pleasant meal - the weekend was underway.

Friday 25th. The day started at Petersfield Pond - a pretty area with swans and other water birds, from where the Singer cavalcade took a scenic cross-country route including Harting Hill, a popular hill climbing venue in the thirties, and bottom gear stuff for most of the older Singers, to Fishbourne Roman Palace, followed by visit to Bosham and a trip around Chichester Harbour on a solar-powered electric boat. .
The palace was very impressive, with some of the best Roman mosaic floors ever to have been excavated. One of the floors, the centre-piece of which shows Cupid riding a Dolphin is particularly fine, though all the floors have suffered significant subsidence
The owner was apparently a man called Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus who is notable for being a high-ranking Briton who embraced the Roman way of life.  Mr Cogidubnus, it seems, not only liked the Roman way of life, but was something of
a collaborator and fifth columnist, for it is thought that Fishbourne was used as a clandestine safe house for Roman soldiers prior to the final invasion, and that while the British were trying to repulse the main invasion further up the coast, these soldiers crept out to attack the rear of the British lines.  It is known that the palace was eventually destroyed by fire, and the museum computer-generated audio-visual display shows the owner and his family fleeing in panic from the all-consuming flames. Knowing the owner’s penchant for skulduggery, is it not more likely that the house was becoming uninhabitable due to the severe subsidence in the floors, and that he set fire to the place himself to claim on the insurance?
Continue to Bosham ...