Moving to Southampton

Ports, cruise & shipping

ABP Port of Southampton, DP World Southampton, Carnival UK (P&O Cruises and Cunard) at Carnival House, Red Funnel

Southampton is Britain's cruise capital and its principal vehicle-handling port, with four cruise terminals and a container terminal alongside. Carnival UK runs P&O Cruises and Cunard from an office on the waterfront, which means a large white-collar maritime employer sits next to a large blue-collar one — an unusual combination for a British city this size.

Marine science, engineering & ocean research

National Oceanography Centre, the University of Southampton's Waterfront Campus, the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, marine surveyors and yacht designers across the Solent

The National Oceanography Centre and the university's marine science school share the Waterfront Campus at Empress Dock — it is one of the largest concentrations of ocean and earth science in Europe, and it exists here because the deep water and the double tide made this a port in the first place.

Geospatial, data & mapping

Ordnance Survey at Adanac Park, the Geospatial Commission's partners, a cluster of location-data startups around the university

Ordnance Survey — Great Britain's national mapping agency, and the reason every OS grid reference exists — has been headquartered in Southampton since 1841 and moved to a purpose-built campus at Adanac Park in 2011. If you work in geospatial data anywhere in Britain, the reference dataset is made here.

Health, life sciences & universities

University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, the Centre for Cancer Immunology, the University of Southampton, Solent University

University Hospital Southampton is the regional major trauma centre and a national specialist centre for cardiac, paediatric and transplant work. The university's Centre for Cancer Immunology, opened in 2018, was the UK's first building dedicated entirely to cancer immunology research and is a genuine reason specialists move to the city.

Aerospace & advanced engineering heritage

Solent Sky's Supermarine collection, GE Aerospace and Collins at Eastleigh and Fareham, marine and motorsport engineering across the Solent

The Spitfire was designed by R. J. Mitchell at Supermarine's works in Woolston and first flew from Eastleigh aerodrome — now Southampton Airport — on 5 March 1936. The works were bombed in 1940 and production dispersed across the region; the engineering base that survived is why the Solent is still an advanced-manufacturing corridor.

Energy & industrial Solent

ExxonMobil's Fawley refinery and petrochemical complex, Marchwood, Solent Gateway, the offshore wind supply chain

Fawley, directly across Southampton Water, is the largest oil refinery in the United Kingdom and one of the biggest petrochemical complexes in Europe. It is a major employer for the whole western side of the city and it is why the Waterside towns exist in the form they do.

Landmark · City centre, between Above Bar and the Old Town

A Norman gatehouse of about 1180 standing on its own in the middle of the shopping street, at the head of one of the most complete circuits of medieval town walls surviving in England.

Local tip: Roughly half the original wall circuit and a large share of its towers survive, and you can walk most of it from the Bargate down through the Old Town to Town Quay in about forty minutes. Almost nobody does. Look for the Arcades on Western Esplanade, where the wall was built straight through the front of a row of merchants' houses after the French raid of 1338.

Culture · Civic Centre, city centre

The city's museum of its own maritime history, built around the fact that Titanic sailed from Berth 44 here on 10 April 1912 and that most of her crew were Sotonians.

Local tip: The point people from elsewhere miss is that Titanic is not a tourist story in Southampton, it is a family one — more than 500 households in the city lost someone, and whole streets in Northam and Chapel were affected. The museum's crew database lets you look up individuals by address. The dock itself is still working and is not open to the public.

Nature · North of the city centre, from the Civic Centre up to Bassett

A 326-acre common of woodland, ponds and rough grass, linked to the city centre by a chain of Victorian parks laid out as a continuous green spine.

Local tip: The five Central Parks — East, Houndwell, Palmerston, Hoglands and Watts — were laid out in the 1860s and connect the shopping streets to the Common on foot, so you can walk from the water to open woodland almost entirely through parkland. The Common has a wildlife centre, a boating lake and, in June, a very large fair.

Neighborhood · South-east of the Old Town, on the Itchen

A marina and apartment quarter on the old Outer Dock, with the cruise terminals to the west and the Isle of Wight ferries leaving from Town Quay next door.

Local tip: The best free thing in Southampton is watching a cruise ship leave — they sail on the evening tide and the scale of them against the buildings does not translate to photographs. Mayflower Park and Weston Shore are the two vantage points locals use. Check a departure schedule; there are often several a week in season.

Nature · West of the city, across Southampton Water

A national park of open heath, ancient woodland and free-roaming ponies, cattle and pigs, whose boundary is about twenty minutes from the city centre.

Local tip: The New Forest is a national park where the animals have legal right of way and are genuinely on the roads at night — drive it slowly and expect ponies. Take the train to Ashurst or Brockenhurst rather than driving into it on a summer weekend, when the car parks fill by ten.

Culture · Town Quay to Hythe, across Southampton Water

A passenger ferry across the water to Hythe, met at the end of a 640-metre Victorian pier by the oldest continuously operating public pier train in the world.

Local tip: The pier railway has run since 1922 using locomotives built in 1917, and it is a working commuter service rather than a heritage attraction — people take it to the office. The crossing gives you the best view of the docks, the cranes and the container ships that exists, for the price of a bus fare, and hardly anyone who lives in Southampton has done it.