We could not match "PORTSDOWN" in our simplified list of the main towns and villages, or as a postcode. There are several other ways of finding places within Vision of Britain, so read on for detailed advice and 10 possible matches we have found for you:

• If you meant to type something else:
  
  



• If you typed a postcode, it needs to be a full postcode: some letters, then some numbers, then more letters. Old-style postal districts like "SE3" are not precise enough (if you know the location but do not have a precise postcode or placename, see below):
  
  
  
  
  
• If you are looking for a place-name, it needs to be the name of a town or village, or possibly a district within a town. We do not know about individual streets or buildings, unless they give their names to a larger area (though you might try our collections of Historical Gazetteers and British travel writing). Do not include the name of a county, region or nation with the place-name: if we know of more than one place in Britain with the same name, you get to choose the right one from a list or map:
  
  
  
  
  
• You have just searched a list of the main towns, villages and localities of Britain which we have kept as simple as possible. It is based on a much more detailed list of legally defined administrative units: counties, districts, parishes, wapentakes and so on. This is the real heart of our system, and you may be better off directly searching it. There are no units called "PORTSDOWN" (excluding any that have already been grouped into the places you have already searched), but administrative unit searches can be narrowed by area and type, and broadened using wild cards and "sound-alike" matching:
  
  



• If you are looking for hills, rivers, castles ... or pretty much anything other than the "places" where people live and lived, you need to look in our collection of Historical Gazetteers. This contains the complete text of three gazetteers published in the late 19th century — over 90,000 entries. Although there are no descriptive gazetteer entries for placenames exactly matching your search term (other than those already linked to "places"), the following entries mention "PORTSDOWN":

  Place name	County	Entry	Source
  BOARHUNT	Hampshire	Portsdown Hill, 2 miles NE of Fareham r. station. Post Town, Fareham. Acres, 1,938. Real property, £1,536. Pop., 267. Houses	Imperial
  FAREHAM	Hampshire	Portsdown hill, a lofty eminence of 7 miles, extending east and west, commences immediately above Cam's hill. Pop. of the town	Imperial
  PORCHESTER, or Portchester	Hampshire	Portsdown hill, near the Portsmouth and Southampton railway, 5 miles N W by N of Portsmouth; was known to the ancient	Imperial
  Portsdown	Hampshire	Portsdown , hundred, Hants, 17,938 ac., pop. 5993; contains 9 pars.	Bartholomew
  PORTSDOWN	Hampshire	PORTSDOWN , a hill and a hundred in the S E of Hants. The hill extends from the neighbourhood of Havant	Imperial
  PORTSMOUTH	Hampshire	Portsdown hill, with Cobbett, to petition for parliamentary reform, in 1817. George IV. embarked at P., for Ireland, in 1821. A whale	Imperial
  PURBROOK	Hampshire	Portsdown hill, 3 miles W by N of Havant r. station, and 6½ N N E of Portsmouth; and has a post	Imperial
  SOUTHAMPTONSHIRE, Hampshire, or Hants	Hampshire	Portsdown hill, an isolated eminence, 7 miles long, 1 mile broad, and about 450 feet high, extends from E to W, along	Imperial
  WIDLEY	Hampshire	Portsdown hill, 1¾ mile N by E of Cosham r. station, and 4 NNE of Portsmouth. It includes Potwell	Imperial
  WYMERING	Hampshire	Portsdown, and Great Horsea and Little Horsea islets. Acres, 4,307; of which 762 are water. Real property, £5,954. Pop. in 1851, 751; in 1861, 1,071. Houses	Imperial

  It may also be worth using "sound-alike" and wildcard searching to find names similar to your search term:
  
  



• Place-names also appear in our collection of British travel writing. If the place-name you are interested in appears in our simplified list of "places", the search you have just done should lead you to mentions by travellers. However, many other places are mentioned, including places outside Britain and weird mis-spellings. You can search for them in the Travel Writing section of this site.



• If you know where you are interested in, but don't know the place-name, go to our historical mapping, and zoom in on the area you are interested in. Click on the "Information" icon, and your mouse pointer should change into a question mark: click again on the location you are interested in. This will take you to a page for that location, with links to both administrative units, modern and historical, which cover it, and to places which were nearby. For example, if you know where an ancestor lived, Vision of Britain can tell you the parish and Registration District it was in, helping you locate your ancestor's birth, marriage or death.