The main road east, now largely unrecognisable for the way it has grown. The urban sprawl makes it difficult to spot the boundary between Fareham and Portchester. It was maintained by the 'Titchfield and Cosham Turnpike Trust' from 1810 until this was wound up in November 1878.
The route was designated A27 in 1922, which went from Romsey to Brighton at the time. It was then separately designated part of the Folkestone to Honiton trunk route in 1937, a status which was taken away in 1977. It was designated a primary route in 1964, and that status was revoked in 1984.
Starting at Delme Arms Corner, which takes its name from the pub at the junction (formerly Charringtons/Delme Lounge), which itself is named after Peter Delmé, who between him and his family owned Cams Hall for nearly a century in the 1800s. Once a crossroads, where Cams Hill flowed on to East Street, crossing Wallington Shore Road and the wide entrance to Cams Hall, the area is now overshadowed by the modern A27, with only the suspect kerblines and the isolated section of Wallington Shore Road providing evidence of the junction. There was a vintage fingerpost here, of the same style of the one in Wallington village.
This is arguably one of the most historic landmarks in Fareham, albeit not a very interesting one, but it's where the routes from Wallington and Fareham combined into one road out of here. It changed in 1957 when Cams Hill was replaced by a straighter road on the modern alignment, but it was still a staggered crossroads and a simple right turn for Wallington. This layout only existed for 15 years but it meant reclaiming some land from the creek. The line of the main road can therefore be traced just by following the white railings.
A modern landmark is the Cams Mill pub. This was only built in 2014, but for some reason, many long-time Fareham residents believe it has been around all their life. You can even go back before it was built on Google Street View! What is true is that the new building took inspiration from the mill which was positioned closer to the railway arch, but this land was clearly part of Cams Hall. Around the back of the pub is the path along the waterfront, which became part of the UK's 'right to access the coast', which was made official in 2009.
Cams Hall
The other option at this crossroads was the entry to Cams Hall, a 13th century manor house. It was surrounded by open land, with everything in front of the house known as 'North Park' and everything behind the house known as 'South Park'. The western esplanade was called 'Bathing House Grove', named after its views towards Bath Lane.
The entrance originally had white gates, and two lodge buildings. On the west side, the small lodge building had a living room with basement kitchen. The east lodge had a bedroom with a cellar below. These lodges (and the gates) were demolished when the road was widened in 1956.
New lodge buildings, based on the originals, were built next to the new road junction in the early 2000s, acting as offices.
From the original junction was a long driveway, with a loop at the front of the hall. The building's ground floor had rooms including: the main drawingroom, dining room, servant's hall, kitchen, lock-up cook's store cubpaord, wash-up pantry, cold larder, pantry, telephone room, outer hall, inner hall, bycycle room, smoking room, flower room and conservatory.
The first floor had rooms including the splendid upstairs drawingroom, with marble columns, which was used for picture storage and Christmas parties. There was also the housekeeper's room, dressing-room, a charming library, spare bedroom ('Rose Room'), bedroom, two spare bedrooms ('Green Room), the west passage, the pink room, and a bathroom.
The second floor had a lumber room ('top room'), a servant's bedroom and a nursery. There were stables outside, forming the 'Cams Hall Home Farm', and the back of the house had views across Portsmouth Harbour.
This website does not often name individuals, as they may not appreciate their names being online for all to search, but I must thank John David Spinney, who left a detailed and humorous description of his experience as a child in Cams Hall in 1936 with Fareham Archives in 1986. He called his work "unduly prolix", as he wasn't sure which details would interest future generations, a policy which is also adopted here.
These images are from 1936. Tap to enlarge them.
Cams Hall was "not properly occupied" after 1936. It was taken over by the Portsmouth naval authorities as an office during World War II, with minor internal changes being made, after which there was no plan for it.
There was talk about it becoming a housing estate, but in 1953 an explosion at the naval storage yard left the hall heavily damaged and it fell in to disrepair. The death of the next leaseholders, the Hill family who had intended to make it a caravan park, as well as further vandalism, saw it listed as derelict in 1989.
Some of North Park was lost when the road was built in 1956. Initially the entrance continued in roughly the same place as the old crossroads, but after further widening, it was moved and the driveway became much straighter. The North Park land had been used to host funfairs; some of it was used to build Fareham Girls' Grammar School in 1957.
A restoration programme began in 1991, which saw Cams Hall and its surrounding outbuildings turned into offices and leisure facilities. The remaining parkland opened as Cams Hall Estate golf course in 1993.
Back to the Road
The original line of the A27 out of Fareham was a narrow climb past people's doorsteps, which must have been an unpleasant experience before the motorway, even in the 1950s. Many trees were planted here in 1927.
The 1957 changes built a new road on a new line, now with two lanes coming down the hill. The more gentle alignment, which took away the gateway to Cams Hall, kept it further away from the houses and may have allowed some of the woodland to be saved.
That road was later widened again, and then changed again in 2024 to make it easier for children to cycle to school, which attracted a lot of online complaints, as seems to be a recent trend. Ironically, the new layout actually brings the road closer to how it was in the 1960s.
A sign here still gives the distance to Chichester, a reminder that this was once this was the start of the open road. The sign itself isn't that old, but it has been replaced like-for-like even though nobody would go this way now. There are no remaining signs for Brighton, which was once prominently signed along here too.
There is some confusion over which road is what: it appears that the old road was originally Portchester Road, and then the name Cams Hill stuck, at least for the part that was a hill. The new road is also known as Cams Hill but only between the lights - the rest of it is referred to as Portchester Road, which is probably its correct name.
To really confuse things, you also have that tiny stub of Wallington Shore Road. When the roundabout was built in 1971, Wallington Shore Road was cut off from Cams Hill (and both were cut off from the new road): the handful of houses on this isolated bit of Wallington Shore Road were accessed from Wallington Military Road. When the motorway was built in 1976, that connection was also severed, and this little stub was reattached to Cams Hill.
Beyond the old cottages by the pub is Downend Dell. This was a couple of properties which became the full street known as The Dell in the 1980s.
Here a gap is provided for the old road to meet to the new one. This has also moved: it used to be outside 23 Cams Hill (the house with the longer driveway), but was moved further west when the road was widened.
The wonderfully named Paradise Lane is a historic lane running up to and beyond Wallington Military Road. It served Downend Farm, which was on the eastern side right before the railway line. It was never much more than a track. In the corner of its junction is the Downend Cottage, built in the early 19th century.
Speaking of Paradise Lane, it's worth mentioning that beyond the railway bridge, the road roughly follows an old railway line, which went from the viaduct to Fort Southwick. All traces of it are long gone.
Cams Hill's tree-lined journey continued, as it went through open land, skirting the edges of North Park and Downend Farm. This remained the case even after the 1957 road was built next to it, but a string of large houses soon arrived, with every single property having a name rather than a number. All the houses on The Ridgeway opened with names too, making for a lot of names.
Until they were built, the next few properties on Cams Hill were Nursery Lodge and Downend Lodge, which formed the entrance to Downend House, owned by Charles Osborn. The access to this survives as the driveway to The Lodge, 30 Cams Hill.
In 1950 the land south of Downend House was sold to create The Ridgeway and St Catherines Way, and a few properties on Portchester Road itself. This happened a few years before The Ridgeway and The Causeway (around the farm) were built, and the house itself wasn't demolished until even later, becoming Alum Way.
At St Catherine's Way, the 1957 improvement came to an end. Even though it has since been completely rebuilt, the modern road shifts north as it joins its historic line. A 1953 proposal for Cams Hall involved building a large housing estate and three schools. While that wasn't pursued at its original scale, there was the opening of Fareham Girls' Grammar School in 1957, which was accessed from a long driveway off of Birdwood Grove (after the Ministry of Transport refused to allow even a gate to be placed on the main trunk road). A ceremony was held that July.
This building became Cams Hill mixed school in 1975. Some of their land was sold off to create Shearwater Avenue in the 1990s; Birdwood Grove itself was opened as 'Cams Manor Estate' in 1937.
East Cams Close takes up the land formerly occupied by East Cams House, which formed part of the East Cams Farm. There would have been a tollgate here, the last one before Wymering. Opposite, a row of 1940s houses is set back from the road. Despite it aligning perfectly with other sections of old road, it looks like this one was actually a modern addition. Another field was sold to create Cams Bay Close in the 1960s. The public footpath here was the route down to Wicor Marsh and Wicor Farm long before any of the houses were built; everything else has been built around it.
One document from 1968 mentions a proposal to build a road from Collingwood to "the Downend area". With no Shearwater Avenue, there would have been a clear route available. This is not to say that such an idea was ever designed in detail or likely to happen, but it's fascinating to think how different this part of Fareham would have been.
Towards Portchester
The Thicket and The Spinney were originally built to house prisoners of war (camp E251), many of whom later became integrated in to the local community, with today's housing being developed after 1965.
Moving along the road, the earliest houses on the road itself arrived at the start of the 20th century. In the 1980s, Condor Avenue was built, with its tiny roundabout - the sort-of thing you could only get away with once it was no longer officially a main road. It wasn't until 2005 that five old houses on large plots of land were demolished to make way for Oysell Gardens.
Cams Bridge (accessed from The Thicket) leads to Winnham Farm, and formerly served a gravel pit and a piece of land known as Cams Coppice.
The main road through here is wide, but appears to have formed with little encroaching on to private land. Eight houses east of Beaulieu Avenue were the West End Farm, the land from which allowed the road to be upgraded to a dual carriageway, with the eastbound side being the old road. This was one of the proposed crossings points of the M27 in the 1950s.
Cornaway Lane went down to the Little Wicor Farm on the corner, with the larger Wicor Farm at the end of that road, by the Wicor Lake and Wicor Marsh. The huge Cornaway Lane Roundabout is a product of the early 1970s, with its pronounced shape, excessive use of pedestrian fencing and barely-used subways that are surely on borrowed time. Originally traffic on the A27 could drive straight through, with traffic on the roundabout having to stop for them ("French style"), which probably explains its strange shape.
From here on, as we head in to Portchester, things become more vague. The streets which we pass are, very roughly:
- Winham Drive - 1970s
- Rockingham Drive - 1990s
- Romsey Avenue - 1960s
- Cornaway Lane - 1920s/1960s
- Dore Avenue - 1978 (overshadowing Upper Cornaway Lane and Cornaway Bridge)
- The BP garage was Huxfords, before that Fairway Road House
- Central Road - 1940s, formerly allotments
- West Street finished in the 1970s
- New Town - 1930s
- Castle Street - various, mostly 1920s
- St. Helena Way - 1960s
- The remaining residential streets were mostly 1950s
The road was once known as Fareham Road, but this name appears to have been lost as the Fareham boundary became less pronounced. It passed through a crossroads, with a stub in the middle of the roundabout being a remnant of this. The smaller, parallel West Street isn't actually the original: it was built with this area in the 1950s as part of the post-war development of the south.
This moves in to Portchester village, where the West Street bypass was built in around 1971 to relieve the streets. This was another one you could drive straight through. Previously, the old road was Main Road, but it was renamed during early 20th Century redevelopment.
The original line, crossing Castle Street was a poorly reputed crossroads, which can still partially be seen in the alignment of the pavement. This was changed in 1973 when the road was straightened and the subways were built. It went past Portchester Farm (later Murrills, then an engineering works), where it went on to become East Street and then Cosham Road (now Southampton Road).