St George's Church, Portsea
The foundation stone of St George's Church was laid at 5.30am on a May morning in 1753 by William Johnson, a shipwright. The church is known as the shipwrights' church having been built by fifteen shipwrights from the dockyard overseen by Nicholas Vass. They were joined in the construction by "three gentleman, one carpenter, one tallow chandler and one grocer". Together they completed the building of the church in six months, after which it was dedicated to St George. St George's Churchwas a "propriety chapel" attached to St Mary'suntil 27th November 1875, after which it became a parish church permitted to carry out the occasional offices- baptisms, weddings, funerals. More recently during the Second World War, the area of Portsea suffered badly from air bombing raids. The old Georgian houses in the square almost entirely disappeared and St George's was badly damaged. The church was closed for ten years between 1941-1951until a preliminary restoration in 1952 followed by further works twenty years later. The restored church became a daughter church of Portsmouth Cathedral in the adjacent parish, until 1981 when once again the church had its own priest. Today St George's Church continues to be a centre within the community commited to serving the pastoral, practical and spiritual needs of the people of Portsea and beyond.
Now for the cache...
When standing at the given coordinates, you should be at a space in the red brick wall with a tiled path to the churches main entrance- the double green doors. Count the number of slabs between where you are stood right up to the step before the green double doors- this should give you a two digit number- let this equal G.
You will find the cache at N50 47.xxx W001 06.yyy where: xxx=(Gx52)+9 and yyy=(Gx14)+5
The cache is a small disguised nano a short stroll away, the checksum for all fifteen digits is 55. Good luck and happy hunting!
***CONGRATULATIONS SHOCR ON FTF***
If you would like to add to the Church Micro series yourself then please look here
http://churchmicro.co.uk/
There is also a Church Micro Stats & Information page that can be found at
http://www.15ddv.me.uk/geo/cm/ index.html