Before the second world war and the advent of a certain Herr Goering's urban rearrangement activities, Portsmouth - or Portsea Island, at least - had the highest number of pubs per square mile, not just in England, but anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately, many of those historic hostelries disappeared during the Blitz, and in more recent times, since breweries were forced to sell off their pubs to pub companies, and then when a downturn in the economy, following hot on the heels of the smoking ban, more and more pubs were forced to close; some were converted into shops or houses, whilst others were simply demolished, to make way for new developments.

If you visit the Portsmouth Pubs website (link above) there is a fascinating page there that shows a map of an area of Fratton, an area bordered by Lake Road to the north, Arundel Street to the south, Commercial Road to the west and Fratton Road to the east - in the 1930s there were 72 pubs operating in this patch.

And if you were asked to guess how many pubs are still trading in this area today, odds on you wouldn't get anywhere close to the correct total, because of all those pubs - almost one for every street corner - only three survive today, plying their original trade!

Luckily, other pubs have been more fortunate, so we are still able to see some of the many wonderful pubs that were designed between the late 1890s and the first world war by A E Cogswell, probably the most prolific pub architect of all time, although he did design numerous other buildings, as well.

Many of Arthur Edward Cogswell's pubs are instantly recognisable by their mock Tudor appearance and the inclusion of a "witch's hat" turret, but Cogswell came up with numerous other ideas. His grandson once remarked that he suspected that whichever part of the world Cogswell visited during his annual holiday would influence the design of his pubs for the next twelve months!

Arthur Edward Cogswell was born in Peterborough in 1858, the son of a local wood carver and, after the family moved to Portsmouth, in the early 1870s, young Arthur became apprenticed to George Rake, then probably the most respected living architect in the area and the former partner of Thomas Ellis Owen, whose architectural contribution to Portsmouth - and especially Southsea - is legendary.

Owen had died suddenly in 1862, but Rake continued to run their practice on his own, together with various junior assistants, but until the arrival of Cogswell, none seems to have made much of an impression. Among the earliest projects on which Cogswell assisted Rake were Kingston Jail and the then Portsmouth Lunatic Asylum, now St James' Hospital, in Milton - it was the start of something that neither man could have really anticipated.

Sadly, George Rake died in 1855, at what we would now consider a ridiculously young age of 56 (although apparently his death certificate recorded his age as being a year younger). His wife Sarah had died at the beginning of the same year, and she was indeed 55.

Now without his mentor, Arthur Cogswell was already much respected, especially by the local brewing family, the Brickwoods, and it would not be long before he, at their behest, would begin transforming the face of Portsmouth pubs.

In a career spanning six decades, Cogswell was the most prolific architect of his day and both his sons followed him into the practice, which was renamed A E Cogswell and Sons; indeed, in the 1960s, one of his grandsons, Edward, was the principal architect for the News Centre at Hilsea, which was a nice continuation of a family tradition, as Arthur Cogswell himself designed the (then) Evening News building in Stanhope Road, in 1894.

The list of A E Cogswell's buildings is extensive, and we will only mention a few here, but for a full catalogue, you can click on the link below and visit the appropriate page on Stephen Pomeroy's website, which lists the lot!

And it wasn't only pubs with which Cogswell made his name - he designed shops, banks, churches, schools, cinemas, theatres and other public buildings and gave his services free, in the early 1900s, to design the Carnegie Library in Fratton Road, with another prominent architect, A H Bone.

St Saviour's Church in Stamshaw was another Cogswell masterpiece, and he also worked on alterations to both the King's Theatre in Southsea and the Prince's Theatre in Lake Road, both in 1918 - the latter theatre, sadly no longer with us, displayed an unmistakably ornate Cogswell facade.

Arthur Cogswell remained active until almost the end of his life; during the 1920s and 1930s his sons gradually took on more of the day-to-day business of the practice, but the "old man" continued to be the major influence, until his death, at the age of 76, in 1934, and although his son Douglas was largely credited with the first rebuilding of the Coach and Horses inn at Hilsea in 1931, Arthur Cogswell's own influence is efinitely recognisable in any of the contemporary photographs.

With something close to 120 Portsmouth buildings to his credit alone, it's perhaps a little bit surprising that Cogswell was never honoured with a knighthood, at least, but then, from Victorian times up until after the second world war, there was often a prudish element in the Establishment, and perhaps the fact that roughly half of his projects were concerned with pubs had something to do with that.

However, whatever the "lords and masters" might have thought, any afficionado of the architecture of Portsmouth would regard him, quite rightly, as not just a lord, but the "king" of Pompey pubs.