By Martin Brisland.
I am a qualified tour guide and writer of six published local history books and around 150 articles for In Common and elsewhere.
Over the years I have accumulated lots of unusual facts about the Southampton area.
As a guide I soon realised that most people do not remember lots of historical facts, but they do relate to quirky stories. So, I thought it may be of interest to list some of them.
You can see the first part of Heritage: Quirky Southampton here:
The building we know as Tudor House was originally built between 1491 and 1518, incorporating an older banqueting hall.
The building was at risk of demolition as part of a widespread slum clearance around this area in the late nineteenth century, it was saved by a local councillor named William Spranger, who tried to return the house to its original Tudor style. He donated the building to the council to become Southampton’s first museum in 1912. There are stories that King Henry VIII had liaisons there with Anne Boleyn and her ghost still wanders upstairs.
Tristan da Cunha is a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean and a British Overseas Territory.
On 10 October 1961, the eruption of Queen Mary’s Peak, very close to the only settlement of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, forced the evacuation of all 264 inhabitants.
There is no airstrip so the evacuees took to the water in two open local lobster-fishing boats to the uninhabited Nightingale Island.
The next day, they were picked up by a diverted Dutch passenger ship that took them to Cape Town. The islanders later arrived in the U.K. aboard the liner M.V. Stirling Castle to a big press reception. They were settled in old Royal Air Force accommodation near Calshot.
The following year, a Royal Society expedition reported that Edinburgh of the Seven Seas had survived. Most families returned in 1963.
Shop awnings were once commonly used to protect customers from sun or rain, sometimes supported by iron poles that fitted into pavement sockets. A few examples can still be found in Oxford Street and Bedford Place. Also boot scrapers were once popular at the entrance to houses and a few examples still exist.
Athelstan born in 894 CE was the grandson of Alfred the Great. He is considered to be the first King of England. Southampton has an Athelstan Road that connects Bitterne Road West to Pear Tree Avenue.
The Grade II listed fountain in Houndwell Park has the inscription “1859: Presented by Charles P Melly”. He was a Liverpudlian philanthropist who provided public drinking water fountains as an alternative to beer drinking. His great nephew was jazz singer, critic, and writer George Melly (1926 – 2007).
An annual cricket match is held in the Solent in September. Teams from the Royal Southern Yacht Club from Hamble and the Island Sailing Club in Cowes arrive by boat to play on Bramble Bank. This is a triangular sandbar which is only revealed at low tides. The tradition started in 1984 and continues until the pitch disappears.
Wyndham Court opposite the Central Station is a block of 184 flats with an underground car park built between 1966 and1969. White concrete was used to blend in with nearby Civic Centre. It won an Architectural Design award in 1966 and is Grade II listed. From some angles it was designed to resemble the transatlantic liners such as the Queen May. It was named after a Mrs. Wyndham a19th century resident of Hamilton House which stood near the site.
Today, some criticise it for its Brutalist style of architecture. Influenced by French architect Le Corbusier’s inspirational concrete structures, British town planners embraced Brutalist buildings as a way to ease the perennial problem of overcrowding.
The word Brutalsim derives from “beton brut” meaning raw concrete in French.
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