Southampton, a municipal, parliamentary, and county borough and important seaport, in the south of Hampshire, 12½ miles SSW. of Winchester, 23½ NW. of Portsmouth, and 79 SW. of London by the London and South-western Railway (1840). It occupies a peninsula at the head of Southampton Water, and between the estuary of the Test on the west and south and the mouth of the Itchen on the east. There are considerable remains of the 14th-century town-walls, and four out of seven gates, the Norman Bargate being much the finest, though shorn of its effigies of Sir Bevis of Hampton and the giant Ascapard. Southampton is furnished with the usual municipal and other institutions common to all thriving towns, and has besides the Watts Memorial Hall (1876), a grammar-school (1553; rebuilt and reorganised 1872-75), the Hartley Institution (1862), and the headquarters of the Ordnance Survey (1857). St Mary's Church (1878-79), by Street, is a memorial to Bishop Wilberforce. St Michael's Church, the oldest in the borough, contains Norman tower arches, and several of the private houses are of Norman architecture. The Domus Dei, or God's House, dates from the end of the 12th century, and is one of the earliest hospitals in England; in its chapel (now used for French service) are buried the Earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope, and Sir Thomas
Grey, executed by Henry V. for treason in 1415. The docks, first opened in 1842, can float the largest steamers, and have been greatly extended and improved. A new tidal dock, 18 acres in extent and having a minimum depth of 26 feet at low-water spring-tides, was opened by Queen Victoria on 26th July 1890; its cost was £300,000. A handsome pier was opened by the Duke of Connaught in 1892; and a new graving-dock, 750 feet long by 112½ feet broad, was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1895. Southampton is the place of departure and arrival of the West India and Brazil and the South African mail steam-packets, and has a large trade with the Continent. In 1896 the gross tonnage of the shipping was 2,998,254 tons. Yacht and ship building and engine-making are actively carried on. Incorporated as a borough by Henry I., Southampton returns two members to the House of Commons. Pop. (1801) 7913; (1851) 45,305; (1881) 60,051; (1891) 65,325.
Southampton supplanted the Roman station of Clausentum, which stood about one mile to the north-east, and its foundation is ascribed to the Anglo-Saxons. It is called Hamtune and Suth-Hamtun in the Saxon Chronicle, and Hantune in the Domesday Book. After the Conquest Southampton, from which there was ready transit to Normandy, began to prosper rapidly, and in early times it traded with Venice and Bayonne, Bordeaux and Rochelle, Cordova and Tunis. A great part of it was burned by the combined French, Spanish, and Genoese fleets in 1338, and in the following year its defences were strengthened. Southampton is the birthplace of Isaac Watts (to whom in 1861 a monument was erected in the West Park), of Charles Dibdin, and of Sir J. E. Millais.
SOUTHAMPTON WATER is a fine inlet, stretching north-westward from the point at which the Solent and Spithead unite. It is 11 miles long and nearly 2 miles wide. The Isle of Wight, which intervenes between the Southampton Water and the Channel, forms a magnificent natural breakwater, and occasions a second high-water two hours after the first. Southampton Water receives the Test or Anton, Itchen, and Hamble.
See the map at the article PORTSMOUTH; J. Silvester Davies' History of Southampton (1883); and F. M'Fadden's Vestiges of Old Southampton (1891).