Gosport is a town, district and borough in Hampshire with around 79,000 resident inhabitants, with a further 5-10,000 during the summer months, situated on the south coast of England. Part of the South Hampshire conurbation, it lies on a peninsula on the western side of Portsmouth Harbour opposite the city of Portsmouth, to which it is linked by a pedestrian ferry.

Until the last quarter of the 20th century it was a major naval and military centre associated with the defence and supply infrastructure of Portsmouth Harbour. With the decline of these activities, many of its fortifications and installations, such as Fort Blockhouse and Palmerston Forts like Fort Brockhurst, have been opened to the public as tourism and heritage sites, with extensive redevelopment of the harbour area as a marina. Stokes Bay and the Solent are popular areas for yachting. Other tourism sites in Gosport include the Royal Navy Submarine Museum based just outside of Fort Blockhouse, the Explosion! exhibition, the Gosport museum and Little Woodham.

The Rowner area of the peninsula was known to have been settled in Saxon times, mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles as Rughenor (Rough bank or slope). Both Rowner and Alverstoke (a village now within the boundaries of Gosport), the name coming from the original point where the River Alver entered the Solent at Stokes Bay, were included in the Domesday Book. Settlements in the wider region date back much earlier. Rowner is recorded as being the earliest settlement of the peninsula with many Mesolithic finds and a hunting camp (presently sealed under the reclamation site) being found, tumuli are located on the peninsula (all investigated). Bronze Age items found during a 1960's construction in HMS Sultan included a hoard of axe heads and torcs (now stored by Portsmouth museum services). A three-celled dwelling unearthed during construction of the Rowner Estate in the 1970s points to a settled landscape. Adjacent to the River Alver which passes the southern and western edges of Rowner can be found a Norman motte and bailey, the first fortification of the peninsula, giving a high vantage point over the Solent, Stokes Bay, Lee-on-the-Solent and the Isle of Wight. The Rowner estate and HMS Sultan are situated upon the former Naval air station, first known as RAF Gosport and later as HMS Siskin and gives its name to the local infant and junior schools. The barracks at Browndown (Stokes Bay) were used in the first series of Bad Lads Army.

Royal Hospital Haslar, formally the last military hospital of the U.K. was closed as a military site in March 2007. It was opened in 1753, serving military personnel and their families, later also serving the community of Gosport. The hospital will now be used by the N.H.S. until the completion of the ongoing redevelopment of Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, Portsmouth at which time the site will be closed (Now Closed). Within the grounds, situated next to Haslar wall on the Solent can be found graves of Turkish prisoners of war in tranquil settings overlooking the busy waterways between the mainland and the Isle of Wight. These graves have led to the disparaging nickname of Gosport (especially by those living in Portsmouth) as "Turktown".

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