Exploring GB

The Bargate in Southampton is said to be 'the finest and most complex town gateway in Britain.'

The Grade I listed structure was built in 1180 as a main entrance into the town, people still walk through it today 840 years later.

It has had many uses, including holding the city’s original Guildhall, where merchants gathered for hundreds of years, and a prison.

During World War II, it was also used as an air-raid shelter helping the residents survive the bombings.

Much of the medieval city walls also still survive today, together with the vaults where the merchants stored their wine.

Nikolaus Pevsner, the respected architectural historian, wrote of Southampton’s Bargate “The Bargate is probably the finest, and certainly the most complex, town gateway in Britain”.

He also went on to write “In all of Britain there are few, if any examples of medieval urban defences as impressive as those in Southampton”.

Pevsner argued Southampton’s town walls, the third longest medieval town walls in Britain, were more interesting and exciting than those of York and Conway.

The Bargate was originally constructed of stone and flint.

Alterations were made to the building around 1290, when large drum towers were added to the north side, with arrow slit windows.

The building has been modified and adapted over the years to reflect its changing use and the needs of the town.

The ground floor of the Bargate was a prison at one - in 1439 the bolt was repaired and in 1458 Genoese residents of the town were imprisoned there.

The Bargate was used as a prison right up until Georgian times when it was relocated to Gods House Tower.

This was because footpath posterns were cut each side of the main arch.

The Bargate has welcomed many Royal visitors and witnessed many important events in its past.

The army of Edward III passed through the arch in 1346 on the way to the Battle of Crecy, similarly Henry V’s army in 1415 to fight at Agincourt.

In 1529, Henry VIII announced from the Bargate his condemnation of Martin Luther’s writings.

Both Charles I and II visited the Bargate and allied soldiers marched through the Bargate in both World Wars.

It is surprising given the Bargate’s architectural and historical importance, that with the introduction of the electric trams in 1900, it was suggested that it be demolished.

It was planned that the stones would be used to reclaim land along the Western Shore, or that it be removed to a different location such as Houndwell Park.

Thankfully, such suggestions did not become reality, and we can look forward to the Bargate taking pride of place in the redeveloped area in a few years time.

Saxon Southampton was laid out with streets on a grid pattern like the old Roman town, but all the buildings in it were of wood.

In the town, craftsmen made things like needles and combs from animal bone.

There were also blacksmiths, bronze smiths, carpenters, thatchers, leather workers, and potters. Women wove wool into cloth.

But in the years 1150-75, many wealthy merchants rebuilt their houses in stone.

The Medieval Merchant's House (pictured above) is a lovely example - a restored building nuilt in about 1290 by John Fortin, a prosperous merchant.

The house survived many centuries of domestic and commercial use largely intact.

German bomb damage in 1940 revealed the medieval interior of the house, and in the 1980s it was restored to resemble its initial appearance and placed in the care of English Heritage, to be run as a tourist attraction.

The house is built to a medieval right-angle, narrow plan design, with an undercroft to store wine at a constant temperature, and a first-storey bedchamber that projects out into the street to add additional space.

The building is architecturally significant because, as historian Glyn Coppack highlights, it is "the only building of its type to survive substantially as first built"; it is a Grade 1 Listed building and scheduled monument.

Reviewing the scheduled monument on TripAdvisor, someone said: “Right in the middle of the historical quarter of the city, this old gate is imposing and quite beautiful.

”I was a bit put off by all of the reviews which called it a hunk of rock. Yes, it is stone construction and is of historical significance.”

If you’d like to see this for yourself, it can be found in the high street, the address is: High St, Southampton SO14 2DJ.

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