Exhibit celebrates 100 years of Portsmouth graduates

The University of Portsmouth has just wrapped up its 2026 graduation ceremonies at Portsmouth Guildhall, celebrating more than 7,500 graduates in front of over 25,000 family and friends across 23 ceremonies and eight days. 

Now that the gowns have been put away, Portsmouth residents have the chance to discover what graduating - and studying - in the city looked like a century ago, at a new exhibition running throughout August and September at Ravelin Sports Centre.

Town, City and Gown: College Life in 1920s Portsmouth tells the stories of the students who studied at the University's three predecessor institutions in the decade Portsmouth became a city, drawing on rare photographs, prospectuses and student records held in the University of Portsmouth Archive and Portsmouth History Centre.

The free, family-friendly exhibition is just one of the activities that the University has been supporting through the Portsmouth 100 year of celebration, marking a century since the city was granted its status. It explores Portsmouth Municipal College, Portsmouth Training College and the Municipal School of Art.

When Portsmouth was granted city status on 21 April 1926, the Training College magazine couldn't resist a wry aside: "We feel that a little additional glory is thereby reflected on our College!" The exhibition traces how the moment rippled through college life, from a rebranded Portsmouth Training College to a General Strike just weeks later and explores the social and academic experience of being a Portsmouth student in the 1920s.

One of the many stories on display is about Richard Gordon Tremlett. He arrived at Portsmouth Municipal College in 1926 as a Pharmacy apprentice, playing for the college football team in his spare time. He went on to run Tremlett's Chemist in the city, later reflecting in his memoir on treating a fire with cough medicine as a Red Cross volunteer during the Second World War - and getting a £5 reward from the neighbouring Lloyds Bank for his trouble. His granddaughter, Dr Annabel Tremlett, is now an Associate Professor in Social Inclusion at the University.

Another is about Olivia Manning, who would go on to write the acclaimed Fortunes of War trilogy, studied evening classes at the Municipal School of Art in 1925/26. Two years later, one of her paintings was selected for exhibition in Southsea and she was offered her own one-woman show - long before she turned to the detective fiction and wartime novels that made her name.

Visitors will also discover the international students who boarded with lecturers' families in Southsea, the apprentices who trained alongside university-standard degree students, and the women who studied at a time when only around a quarter of UK university students were female.

The exhibition was produced by Dr Jodi Burkett, Senior Lecturer in late twentieth century British and imperial history at the University, and Anna Delaney, University Archivist, supported by Dr Tarek Teba and in association with the University's Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation, with contributions from the Disability Staff Network, the Portsmouth Literary Map and Dr Annabel Tremlett.

Anna Delaney, University Archivist, said: “Graduation is always a highlight of our academic year - a chance to celebrate our graduates' success, and to send them off with our very best wishes for the future. It's a truly special occasion that doesn't happen without everyone who supports it. This exhibition lets us look back at our students from a hundred years ago, and we hope visitors will come away recognising streets, buildings and even surnames from their own family histories.”

Supporting heritage across the city

The University of Portsmouth's Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation (CoE-HI) launched in December 2025 building on the work of the University's Heritage Hub. The Centre develops projects that identify, interpret and preserve tangible and intangible heritage, working with communities and partners across Portsmouth and beyond.

Other recent projects supported by the Centre include a touring exhibition on Portsmouth's railway workers, which told the life stories of local rail employees from the 1850s to the Second World War and featured aboard the national Railway 200 exhibition train on its first stop on the South Coast, and a project to record the post-war stories of Portsmouth's African and Caribbean community, working with the Portsmouth Black History Group to document experiences of those who settled in the city after the Second World War.

Dr Tarek Teba, Associate Professor in Architectural Heritage and Co-director of the Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation, said: “Exhibitions like this show exactly what the Centre is here to do - taking the rich heritage held in our archives and collections and making it meaningful for people in Portsmouth today. Whether it's a 1920s student timetable or the memories of railway workers a century ago, we want communities to see themselves in this history and to help shape how it's told.”

Town, City and Gown: College Life in 1920s Portsmouth runs throughout July at Ravelin Sports Centre, University of Portsmouth, and is free and open to the public during normal opening hours.

For more information about the University of Portsmouth Archive, or to share photographs or documents relating to student life in the 1920s to more recent times, contact [email protected] or 02392 843292.