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12 THE KING'S YARD
times. The Jews were not far behind the Dockyard
men in finding dwellings close to their work, and
soon they began to run over from Portsmouth proper
on to the Common. Soon little
shops opened
in all
directions, in which sailors could spend their prize
money in
gold watches and such-like follies, and the
older established tradespeople along the Hard before
long found serious opponents
in the rival dealers of
the new town.
But all this is a digression, introduced that you
may understand how the town ran over into the
fortifications, so that strangers who came into it,
until they learned the topography of the place, never
knew whether they were inside or outside of the
lines.
The Portsmouth Road, then, ran along by the Yard,
and at one end of it was the Dockyard gate. A high
wall separated the Common from the Yard, and
under the shadows of it there still remain a few
streets
keeping the names they bore a century and
a quarter ago, some of the houses in them yet
standing, and as habitable as they then were. But
for these features, all else is
changed. What were
then neat rows of houses, occupied by well-to-do
officials of the Royal Dockyard, or married pursers,
masters and men of similar ranks in the Service, are
now lost in a maze of more pretentious thoroughfares,