Club Visit to Southwick House

The Club recently had a private guided tour of the Map Room at Southwick House.

Southwick House is a Grade II listed 19th-century manor house of the Southwick Estate in Hampshire, England, about 5 miles (8 km) north of Portsmouth. It is home to the Defence School of Policing and Guarding and related military police capabilities.

The house was built in 1800 in the late Georgian style to replace Southwick Park house. The three-storey house is distinct for its two-storey foyer lit from a cupola and a series of elliptical rooms. A semi-circular portico is centred on the house’s colonnade of paired Ionic columns.

The house became important during World War II. In 1940 the estate owners allowed the Royal Navy to use the house to accommodate overnight pupils of the Royal Navy School of Navigation, HMS Dryad, which was based in Portsmouth Naval Dockyard. In 1941, after heavy bombing of the dockyard, the house was requisitioned and became the new home of HMS Dryad.

In 1943, with the planning for D-Day already underway, the house was chosen to be the location of the advance or forward command post (Sharpener Camp) of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. Because of this, HMS Dryad was moved out of the house onto further land requisitioned from the estate.

In 1944, in the months leading up to D-Day, the house became the headquarters of the main allied commanders, including Allied Supreme Commander General Eisenhower, Naval Commander-in-Chief Admiral Ramsay and Army Commander-in-Chief General Montgomery.

The large wall maps that were used on D-Day are still in place in the house in the main map room.

The club is grateful to James Prain for these photographs.

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Source: ^{_{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwick_House}}