Open edition print from a lithograph.

Final copies of this edition, which is unlikely ever to be reprinted, are sold in aid of South Parade Pier, Southsea... please see below.

1000 x 490 mm

This beautiful picture from a lithograph by A. Pernet is a detailed panorama of activity on Southsea seafront in 1865.

SOLD IN A GOOD CAUSE.All remaining copies of this print have been purchased to raise funds to save South Parade Pier in Southsea, and after our stock runs out this picture, so like the view seen today, will almost certainly never be published again.

(Local icon South Parade Pier, one of the key embarkation points for troops bound to invade the Normandy beaches on D-Day, June 6th, 1944 to throw back the World War II Nazi rule over Europe, was closed to the public as unsafe in 2012). The beautiful and historic pier, built in 1878, juts into the Solent waters just a few hundred metres east along the seafront from the site of this picture.

A charity is being set up (March, 2013) to raise funds to bring the pier into local ownership in order to repair its dangerous structure, develop its business to be profitable and self-sustaining into the future, and guarantee public access forever... for more information, after you finish shopping here, please see http://www,peoplespier.org .

Apart from the paddle steamers taking tourists on pleasure trips in this picture, the army offficers riding on the common and the bathing machines protecting the modesty of those taking the waters, the scene is almost unchanged from what one sees today.

The major exception would be that Clarence Pier on the left with its paddle steamer has been demolished apart from a land-based funfair. Today the site is the landing place for hovercraft to the Isle of Wight.