Lion Terrace

Street guide, Portsea

Lion Terrace is a short street in central Portsea that takes its name from the Lion Gate, one of the former entrances to the Royal Naval Dockyard. The gate, adorned with a carved lion, was one of several named entrances through the dockyard wall that gave adjacent streets their identities. Lion Terrace today is a modest street situated between the dockyard and the expanding University of Portsmouth campus. It contains a mixture of residential properties and institutional buildings. The area around Lion Terrace was heavily bombed during the Second World War, and very little of the pre-war streetscape survives. Post-war housing and more recent university-related development have given the street its current character. Despite its unassuming appearance, the street's name preserves a connection to the dockyard heritage that once defined every aspect of life in this neighbourhood.