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 sand (part of the Bagshot Formation), formed principally during the late and early Eocene Epoch. Northern areas of the city include Stamshaw, Hilsea and Copnor, Cosham, Drayton, Farlington, and Port Solent. Other districts in Portsmouth include North End and Fratton. The west of the city is mainly council estates such as Buckland, Landport, and Portsea. These were built to replace Victorian terraces destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. After the war the estate of Leigh Park was built to solve the chronic housing shortage during the post-war reconstruction. Since the early 2000s the estate has been entirely under