History of Southampton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Southampton is a port city in Hampshire, England. Its history has been affected by its physical geographical location, on a major estuary on the English Channel coast; and by its proximity to London. The areas has been settled since the stone age, and became an important port in mediaeval times. As an industrial and military city it was severly damaged in World War II, affecting its modern development.
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[edit] Pre-Norman
Although Stone Age settlements are known to have existed in the area, the first permanent settlement was established by the Romans. Known as Clausentum, it was an important trading port for the large Roman towns of Winchester and Salisbury.
The Anglo-Saxons moved the centre of the town across the River Itchen to its present location, and it remained an important port. At the time, it was centred around what is now the St Mary's area, and the settlement was known as Hamwic. This name was later to evolve into Hamtun, and later still to Hampton.
The Viking King Canute the Great is supposed to have defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Ethelred the Unready here in 1014 and been crowned here, and his fabled attempt to "command" the tide to halt may have taken place in Southampton. However, its prosperity was assured following the Norman Conquest in 1066, when it became the major port of transit between Winchester (then the capital of England) and Normandy.
[edit] Mediaeval
By the 13th Century, Southampton had become a leading port, and was particularly involved in the wool trade. The Wool House was built in 1417 as a warehouse for the medieval wool trade with Flanders and Italy. This building is today used as the Maritime Museum, and can be found near Town Quay. It includes an exhibition concerning the RMS Titanic.
Bowls was first played regularly on the Southampton Old Bowling Green adjacent to God's House Hospital in 1299. It is the world's oldest surviving bowling green.
The town was sacked in 1338 by the French, including the pirate Grimaldi, who used the plunder to help found the principality of Monaco. After this attack, the city walls were built, some of which remain as ruins today. Lacking proper finance for the construction of a full defensive wall, the townsfolk reached a compromise solution, which involved joining the existing exterior walls of existing merchant houses together to form part of the defensive structure. The city walls include God's House Tower, built in 1417, the first purpose-built artillery fortification in England. Today, it is open as the Museum of Archaeology.
The 12th century Red Lion pub on the High Street below the Bargate within the old walls is where in 1415, immediately prior to King Henry V of England's departure from Southampton to the Battle of Agincourt, the ringleaders of the "Southampton Plot", Richard, Earl of Cambridge, Henry Scrope, 3rd Baron Scrope of Masham and Sir Thomas Grey of Heton, were tried and found guilty of high treason, before being summarily executed outside the Bargate.
During the Middle Ages, shipbuilding became an increasingly important industry, which was to remain for centuries to come. The city became a county corporate in 1447.
King Edward VI Grammar School was founded in the city near God's House Tower as a school for poor clergyman in 1553 by William Capon. Isaac Watts, one of its locally born alumni, wrote the words of the hymn O God Our Help In Ages Past, the melody of which forms the four-hourly peal of the Civic Centre clock chimes. King Edward's survives as a selective independent co-educational secondary school. The Watts memorial in the city's West Park - also known as the Watts Park - was unveiled in 1861.
The port was the original point of departure for the Pilgrim Fathers aboard the Mayflower in 1623. A memorial can be found on Town Quay. Since that time it has been the last port of call for millions of emigrants who left the Old World to start a new life in the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and other parts of the world.
Another notable museum in the City is the Tudor house museum otherwise known as Huttofts or Lady Ann Guidotti's house. Buily in 1495, over the centuries it has been a family home and an artist's studio, and housed businesses including a dye-house and a bookbinder.
The painter John Everett Millais was born in the city. Southampton Solent University's art gallery is named Millais Gallery in his honour.[1]
[edit] Modern
In common with most of the luxury liners of the time, the RMS Titanic sailed from here, and it is still an important ocean liner port frequented by luxury ships such as the RMS QE2, the MV Oriana, and most recently the Queen Mary 2. A memorial to the engineers of the Titanic may be found in Andrews Park, on Above Bar Street. There is a memorial to the musicians who played on the Titanic just opposite the main memorial. Also, the Maritime museum in Wool Hall includes an exhibition related to the vessel. Most of Titanic's crew lived in Southampton; 549 Sotonians died in the sinking.
The city is home to Sir Edwin Lutyens' first permanent cenotaph, a memorial to the city's dead of World War I. When it was unveiled on 6 November 1920, it was 1800 names, later raised to 2008. It can be found in West (Watts) Park, opposite the Titanic memorial.
The Second World War hit Southampton particularly hard, partly because of its strategic importance as the major industrial area on the South Coast and partly because of the city's links to the Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft, which was invented and manufactured in Southampton. Pockets of Georgian architecture remain, but much of the city was levelled. The accuracy of the locally-based Ordnance Survey's maps did not go unrecognised by the Luftwaffe: the German bomber pilots used them to bomb Southampton. One notable building to survive the bombings was Southampton's oldest, St. Michaels Church. Thought to have been commenced in 1070,[2] the building has been added to many times over the centuries but its central tower dates from Norman times. The spire was an important navigation aid for the German pilots and consequently they were ordered to avoid bombing it.[3]
The Spitfire was developed and initially manufactured in the suburb of Woolston. Its designer, Reginald Mitchell, grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, then had a house in Russell Place in the suburb of Highfield near the university (now identified by a memorial plaque). The plane was a direct descendant of experimental aircraft built by Supermarine that competed in the Schneider Trophy in the 1930s. Supermarine was taken over by Vickers in 1928. Mitchell's short life is documented in the film The First of the Few. On Sept 24th 1940, the Woolston factory was bombed, killing 100 workers, though not damaging the factory. Two days later, the factory was heavily damaged by bombing, and thirty more workers died, which interrupted production of the Spitfire for many weeks at a critical time of the UK's survival.
There were many aircraft companies based around Hamble, to the east of the city, from the 1930s to 1950s, including Folland Aviation, started by Henry P Folland, the former chief designer of Gloster Aircraft. Folland was taken over by Hawker Siddeley in 1960, and later as British Aerospace, the factory built the Hawk and Harrier. The history of the area's contribution to aviation is celebrated at the Southampton Hall of Aviation, near Itchen Bridge, and opposite the erstwhile site of the Woolston Supermarine factory. BOAC had a flying boat base in the docks serving British colonial possessions in Africa and Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. It closed in 1950 when land based aircraft became dominant. Nearby, Calshot Spit was a base for the military flying boat services.
Southampton was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, and contained the parishes of All Saints, Holy Rood, St John, St Lawrence, St Mary, St Michael, and part of South Stoneham. The town became a county borough under the Local Government Act 1888. In 1894, under the Local Government Act 1894, the part of South Stoneham within the borough became the parish of Portswood, and in 1895 the parish of Shirley was added. In 1920, Bitterne, and part of the parishes of North Stoneham and South Stoneham were added. The area of the Itchen Urban District was added in 1925. In 1967 it took in part of the Nursling and Rownhams parishes added. The boundaries have been largely unchanged since then, despite the loss of county borough status under the Local Government Act 1972, and subsequent regaining of unitary authority status with the Banham Review.
Southampton was awarded city status in 1964 by Letters Patent.[4] In the local government revision of 1996, Southampton became a unitary authority, administratively independent from Hampshire.
Southampton is also home to the first sewage works in modern Britain. This establishment was only in operation for 6 months and was closed because of the appaling stench.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ http://millais.solent.ac.uk/ - Retrieved 2004-04-08
- ^ http://www.hants.org.uk/sotoncitycentreparish/stmichael.htm - Retrieved 2004-04-08
- ^ http://www.wcities.com/en/record/,120885/206/record.html?event_name=&display=1 - Retrieved 2004-04-08
- ^ City Status for Southampton. The Times. February 12, 1964.
