Buckland is a residential area of the city of Portsmouth

Portsmouth

Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...

 in the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 county of Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

.

Buckland, then known as Bocheland, was one of the three settlements on Portsea Island

Portsea Island

Portsea Island is a small, flat and low lying island just off the south coast of England. The island is totally within, and contains a large proportion of, the city of Portsmouth. It has the third-largest population of any island in the British Isles, after the mainlands of Great Britain and...

 mentioned in the Domesday Book

Domesday Book

Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

. The Manor of Bocheland was purchased by Jean de Gisors

Jean de Gisors

Jean de Gisors was a Norman lord of the fortress of Gisors in Normandy, where meetings were traditionally convened between English and French kings. It was here, in 1188, a squabble occurred that involved the cutting of an elm....

. De Gisors, a Norman

Normans

The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...

 lord who then founded Portsmouth on land at the southern end of the manor, in 1180.

The area was extensively bombed during the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Due to this, and the slum

Slum

A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...

 nature of much of what housing was left, large parts were demolished and replaced with social housing built in the 1950s and '60s.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

 was born in Buckland in 1812. His father moved to Portsmouth to work at the Naval Base. He bought a terraced house in an area close to the base then called Newtown.The house of his birth is now a museum. It stands in Old Commercial Road which is to this day a very prestigious street containing many listed Georgian

Georgian architecture

Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...

 and Victorian

Victorian architecture

The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...

 terraced house

Terraced house

In architecture and city planning, a terrace house, terrace, row house, linked house or townhouse is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Great Britain in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls...

s and town houses.

Kingston Road, which runs through the heart of Buckland, is home to a large selection of fast food outlets and restaurants.

The western part of Buckland adjoins the city's international ferry port and commercial docks.

West Buckland consists of a very large Council Estate with many tower blocks and mid rise blocks of flats. Because Buckland was the birthplace of Charles Dickens, many of the blocks of flats were named after characters in his books. Examples of these include Barkis and Nickelby houses which are two twin tower blocks 18 stories high.

Copperfield and Pickwick houses are another twin set of tower blocks which are 11 stories high. Mickawber house is a mid rise block.

West Buckland is quite deprived and has a very high population density.

Flying Bull Primary and Nursery School serves the Buckland area.