Buckland House near Portsmouth, 19th Century, attributed to John Chessell Buckler or possibly his father John Buckler source
This watercolour of Rugby School seems to have a similar style (to my uneducated eye).
Portsmouth Encyclopaedia has a Buckland House on the northern corner of the junction of Kingston Road (Buckland Road) and New Road in 1865, based on their indexing of the 1865/1874 OS 1:500 Town Plan. It’s also on the 1856/1871 OS Six Inch.
Buckland House, 1:500 Town Plan source
Well… maybe? The house is in the right location, at least - at the north end of the plot, with a door in the centre of the western face and a garden to the south. The painting would have to have been produced before the brewery was built, so we’d need to prove the villa came first.
If this is a painting of Kingston Road, this would have been one of Charles George Harper’s “settlements of a period ranging from 1840 to 1860, contrived in a fashion fondly supposed to represent Italian villas, characteristically constructed of lath and plaster now very much the worse for wear” in 1895, except it didn’t make it that far - by 1896/1898 both it at the brewery are gone, replaced by shops and, I think, better access to the school.
For a local lad, it’s a little bit mind-blowing to look at that image of a villa surrounded by trees and think “New Road”. This might just be the earliest surviving image of that area of the town.
The earliest reference I can find to a Buckland Brewery is 1832, and it’s talking about a three-decade history. That doesn’t bode well for the villa coming first.
Ok, this is a rabbit hole. Fielding crashes and burns within four years, and everything’s up for sale. In 1836 it’s “known for the last fifty years by the name of Buckland Brewery”. It’s also “together with a meadow in the rear, the whole containing upwards of two acres”. This is going to end up in the hands of Bonham Carter. I can feel it. Everything I look at in this town seems to circle back to either him or Spicer.
I… think Buckland House gets sold again, in 1837, because of a completely different bankruptcy. What are the odds? I really hope this is the right place, because I’m getting some great descriptions of the house and its contents in these auction ads.
If the brewer was living in the house, this might be a second Buckland House in the area.
We’re going to need this or something like it.
“62 Kingston Road” is a search term.