Ashburton House, Stokes Bay, Gosport, [Hampshire], purchased by government for a college for naval cadets, 1862. Engraving from a photograph by Richard Poate. A flight of steps lead to the porch, which gives entry to...rooms of unusual size and height, admirably adapted for mess and school rooms, lecture-hall, and library. The upper story contains thirty bedrooms, capable of giving accommodation at once to one hundred cadets. A large garden...would be amply sufficient to supply the establishment all the year round with fruit and vegetables...beyond low- water mark the nature of the ground will afford an anchorage where large sailing-boats can be moored...It would be contiguous to a Government dockyard; would be sufficiently distant, being two miles from Gosport, from any town to protect the pupils from the temptations thrown in the way of youths in a populous neighbourhood; and would be situated on a dry, gravelly soil, with a southerly aspect, and near enough to the beach to have ready access to boats and seagoing tenders. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.