Portsmouth enrols 23,000 students and is ranked among the world's best modern universities. Portsmouth is also the birthplace of author Charles Dickens and engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The Romans built Portus Adurni, a fort, at nearby Portchester in the late third century. The city's Old English name "Portesmuða" is derived from "port", meaning a haven, and "muða", the mouth of a large river or estuary. The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" has a warrior called Port and his two sons killing a noble Briton in Portsmouth in 501. Winston Churchill, in his "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples", says that Port was a pirate
Portsmouth in the area continued until 1974. Developers still occasionally find unexploded bombs in the area, such as on the site of the destroyed Hippodrome theatre in 1984. Despite improvements made by the city council to build new accommodation, a survey made in 1955 concluded that 7000 houses in Portsmouth were unfit for human habitation. Following a controversial decision, a whole section of central Portsmouth, including Landport, Somerstown and Buckland, was demolished and replaced by council housing during the 1960s and early 1970s. The success of the project and the quality of the 70s homes are debatable. Portsmouth was affected by