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
Landport Drapery Bazaar Landport Drapery Bazaar Landport Drapery Bazaar was a department store located on Commercial Road, Portsmouth. In 1870 Robert E Davies, the three time Mayor of Portsmouth opened a department store on what is now called Commercial Road (previously Union Road and Landport Road). He called his new enterprise the Landport Drapery Bazaar after the district that the store was located in. The original store was destroyed by fire in 1908, and subsequently rebuilt. However in 1941 the store received a direct hit from a German Bomber which left a giant crater in the middle of the store. The business however