INTRODUCTION

In south-east Hampshire the population centre of Portsmouth is a relatively new settlement. Non-existent in 1086 at the time of the Domesday Book (Stapleton, 1989), it was founded in the late-twelfth century during a prolonged period of medieval population growth. As a new community it was much smaller than its more established neighbouring market towns at Titchfield and Fareham, or even markets such as that at Havant created at about the same time. Even as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century it seems likely that Portsmouth was still only the fourth or fifth largest parochial community in the region. The parishes of Titchfield, Fareham and Hambledon, all holding markets, apparently contained larger numbers than Portsmouth, and Havant was approximately the same size.

During the seventeenth century, however, Portsmouth's population growth, alongside that of its neighbour across the harbour, Gosport, began to dominate that of the south-east Hampshire region. In the sixteenth century Portsmouth had grown at a rate very similar to that of the region as a whole. During the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century, when the region's population grew by 83.5 per cent (from over 10,000 to over 19,000 inhabitants), Portsmouth and Gosport accounted for 64.7 per cent of the total growth. While the two harbour communities were growing rapidly, the evidence from the rest of the region suggests that population growth was slowing down. This divergence between Portsmouth and Gosport and the rest of the region was even more heavily marked in the last quarter of the seventeenth and the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The Bishop of Winchester's Visitation Return of 1725 indicates that the regional population grew by about 24 per cent from over 18,200 to over 22,600 people. However, if Portsea Island and Gosport are excluded from these calculations, the remainder of the region's population appears to have declined by 6 per cent, whereas that of the two harbour communities rose by 56 per cent—eloquent testimony to the increasing importance of the Portsmouth harbour settlements to the whole region. By this time Portsmouth and Gosport constituted 52.7 per cent of the region's population, or 14,500 out of 22,649, thus consolidating the position of 1676 when they contained some 47 per cent of the region's inhabitants.