Southampton travel guide

Top 10 sights in Southampton

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© http://www.wyrdlight.com Author: Antony McCallum · CC BY 3.0

   Winchester Cathedral

   A cathedral with the longest nave in Europe, begun in 1079 on ground so wet that by 1900 it was sinking — a single diver, William Walker, spent six years underwater packing the foundations with concrete bags. Jane Austen is buried in the north aisle.

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2. 

   2© Humac45 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Osborne House

   The house Victoria and Albert built between 1845 and 1851 as a private family retreat, with Albert himself designing it as an Italian palazzo. She died in it in 1901; the Durbar Room and the children's Swiss Cottage in the garden are both kept as they were.

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3. 

   3© Troxx · CC BY 2.5

   New Forest

   A royal hunting forest since 1079 and now a national park, and one of the largest tracts of unenclosed heath and woodland in southern England. Commoners still turn out ponies, cattle and pigs on it under rights that are nine centuries old, which is why the animals are on the roads.

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4. 

   4© Martin Kraft · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Winchester Castle

   A castle founded in 1067, of which the Great Hall survives — the finest medieval hall in England after Westminster. A round table top of about 1290, painted with Arthur and his knights in Tudor colours, hangs on its wall, and Walter Raleigh was condemned to death in the room.

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5. 

   5© Geni · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Romsey Abbey

   A Benedictine nunnery church of the tenth century, bought by the townspeople for a hundred pounds at the Dissolution and kept as their parish church — which is why so much Norman work survives. Lord Mountbatten is buried in it.

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6. 

   6© Peter Trimming · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Venta Belgarum

   The Roman town on the site of Winchester, capital of the Belgae and one of the larger cities of Roman Britain. Its street grid partly underlies the modern one and its walls were reused by the Saxons when the city became the capital of Wessex.

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7. 

   7© Simon Burchell · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Wolvesey Castle

   The main residence of the bishops of Winchester in the Middle Ages, mostly built by Henry of Blois in the twelfth century, when the see was among the richest in Europe. The ruins stand beside the bishop's present house and the fifteenth-century chapel is still in use.

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8. 

   8© Paul Hermans · CC BY-SA 3.0

   National Motor Museum

   A motor museum at Beaulieu holding some two hundred and fifty vehicles, including several land speed record cars — Bluebird among them. It began as a few cars in the entrance hall of a private house in 1952 and outgrew it.

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9. 

   9© Alan Stewart · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Netley Abbey

   A Cistercian abbey founded in 1239 and left as a ruin after the Dissolution, in a field beside Southampton Water. Its overgrown state made it a favourite of eighteenth-century tourists in search of the picturesque; Jane Austen came out to see it.

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    Southampton Castle

    A Norman motte-and-bailey in the north-west corner of the walled town, rebuilt in stone by the late 12th century to guard the wine trade through the docks. Richard II refortified it against French raids in the 1370s, making it one of the first English castles armed with cannon.

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1. 

   1© JohnArmagh · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Hyde Abbey

   A Benedictine abbey outside the walls of Winchester, founded in 1110, to which the bones of Alfred the Great were moved from the old minster. The abbey was destroyed at the Dissolution and Alfred's grave has never been securely located; the site is partly a garden and partly a car park.

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2. 

   2© Paultons Park Home of Peppa Pig World · CC BY 2.0

   Paultons Park

   A theme park near the village of Ower inside the New Forest National Park in Hampshire in England. It holds seventy rides and eighty species of birds and animals across 140 acres, and made its name by opening Peppa Pig World in 2011.

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   Beaulieu Palace House

   The gatehouse of Beaulieu Abbey, converted into a house after the Dissolution and extended in the nineteenth century, and still lived in by the Montagu family. The Special Operations Executive trained agents on the estate during the war, which the house now explains.

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4. 

   4© Jim Champion · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Exbury Gardens

   Eighty hectares of woodland garden created from the 1920s by Lionel de Rothschild, who employed a hundred and fifty gardeners and bred rhododendrons on a scale nobody has matched. It is generally reckoned the finest garden of its type in Britain and peaks in May.

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5. 

   5© E Gammie · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Beaulieu Abbey

   A Cistercian abbey in Hampshire founded in 1203-04 by King John and settled by thirty monks sent from Citeaux itself, the order's mother house. Dissolved in 1538, its ruins stand in the Beaulieu estate, where the abbey gatehouse survives as Palace House.

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6. 

   6© Michael Coppins · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Bargate

   The Norman gatehouse of the medieval town walls, and the main entrance to Southampton for six centuries. Traffic ran through its arch until 1938; it now stands isolated in a modern precinct, which is the usual English compromise.

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7. 

   7© Kate Jewell · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Mottisfont Abbey

   An Augustinian priory converted into a house after the Dissolution, in the Test valley. Rex Whistler painted its drawing room in 1938 as a trompe l'oeil Gothic interior, leaving a paintbrush apparently resting on a ledge, and the walled garden holds the national collection of old roses.

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8. 

   8© User:Urshankov · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Marwell Zoo

   A zoo of 140 acres at Colden Common near Winchester in Hampshire. The charity Marwell Wildlife runs it and it keeps some five hundred animals of 145 species.

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9. 

   9© Christophe.Finot · CC BY-SA 2.5

   Southampton town walls

   The defences ringing Southampton in southern England. When the town moved to its present site in the tenth century they were built up from banks and ditches together with the bends of the river and the shoreline.

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10. 

    10© Peter Trimming from Croydon, England · CC BY 2.0

    Southampton Tudor House and Garden

    A historic house museum on Bugle Street in Southampton in England. It opened in 1912 as the first museum in the city and was extensively rebuilt between 2002 and 2011.

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