Portslade has been suggested as being the
Roman port
Novus Portus mentioned in
Ptolemy's Geography of the 2nd century AD. Drove Road, in the original Portslade Village, has been linked with the
Roman road (sometimes known as the "
London to Portslade Way") that passes through
Patcham valley to
Haywards Heath and on to
Streatham in London. The Old Shoreham Road is thought to form part of the
Chichester (
Noviomagus Reginorum) to Portslade Roman road. Roman remains and a Roman burial site were found in Roman Road. The name of the town had been thought to stem from the Roman placename
Portus Adurni, but this is based on a misidentification of Shoreham-by-Sea as
Portus Adurni by
Michael Drayton in the 17th century. Indeed, the
River Adur, whose mouth has moved many times due to
longshore drift and erosion, was also named from this misidentification. The actual etymology of Portslade may be
portus- +
-ladda, way to the port, where
ladda is from the
Old English for way, but this is conjectural at best. Portslade was listed in
Domesday Book of 1086 as having two households, and was under the tenancy of William of Warenne, having a value of six shillings. The old name, Copperas Gap, for Portslade-by-Sea suggests that the coast was used for the production of
copperas or green vitriol, a form of
ferrous sulfate used extensively in the textile industry. The process took over six years and made use of
iron pyrite-rich nodules that could be found in the strata of
Sussex greensand stone that emerges at this point in the coast. A part-finished assembly hall in Portslade became an
Odeon Cinema about 1930 when George Coles, one of the Odeon chain's principal architects, adapted the original design.
19th-century residents Revd
Richard William Enraght (1837–1898) was the Priest in Charge of St Andrew Church, Portslade, from 1871 to 1874. Fr. Enraght's belief in the Church of England's Catholic tradition, his promotion of ritualism in worship, and his writings on Catholic worship and church-state relationships led him into conflict with the
Public Worship Regulation Act 1874. While serving as Vicar of Holy Trinity,
Bordesley,
Birmingham in 1880, he paid the maximum price under the Act of prosecution and imprisonment in Warwick Prison. Fr. Enraght became nationally and internationally known as a "prisoner for conscience sake". In September 2006,
Brighton & Hove bus company honoured Fr. Enraght's memory by naming one of their new buses after him.
Edward Vaughan Hyde Kenealy QC (1819–1880) was an Irish born
barrister, writer and poet who lived in Wellington Road, Portslade with his wife and eleven children from the 1850s until the mid-1870s. Kenealy commuted to London and
Oxford for his law practice but returned at weekends and other times to be with his family. He chose Portslade because of his love of the sea, of which he wrote: "Oh, how I am delighted with this sea-scenery and with my little marine hut ! The musical waves, the ethereal atmosphere, all make me feel as in the olden golden days when I was a boy and dreamed of Heaven". While living in Portslade he wrote the greater portion of his
theological works. In 1921 the (northern) parish of Portslade had a population of 523. That Portslade parish was abolished in 1928 and added to the parish and urban district of Portslade-by-Sea. , Victoria Road Portslade-by-Sea Urban District Council acquired
Ronuk Hall on Victoria Road in 1959 to serve as its headquarters and as a community hall; it is now a locally listed building. The urban district of Portslade-by-Sea was abolished in 1974, being absorbed into the
borough of Hove. No
successor parish was created for the area and so Portslade was directly administered by Hove Borough Council. The borough of Hove merged with neighbouring
Brighton in 1997 to become the
unitary authority of
Brighton and Hove, which was awarded
city status in 2000.
Brighton and Hove City Council is therefore the only local authority which covers Portslade today. ==Amenities==