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Highfield Campus is the main campus of the
University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...
and is located in
Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...
, southern England. It is the largest of the University's campuses with most of the students studying there. The campus is also the location of the main university library, the students' union as well as sports facilities.


History


Early 20th century

The University's predecessor the Hartley Institute first bought the Highfield site in June 1909 at the cost of £5,000. Their old premises on the High Street no longer met the requirements of the
Board of Education A board of education, school committee or school board is the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or an equivalent institution. The elected council determines the educational policy in a small regional are ...
and the
Treasury A treasury is either *A government department related to finance and taxation, a finance ministry. *A place or location where treasure, such as currency or precious items are kept. These can be state or royal property, church treasure or in p ...
and so a new site was required for the College to expand. The first campus buildings were opened on 20 June 1914 by the Lord Chancellor,
Viscount Haldane A viscount ( , for male) or viscountess (, for female) is a title used in certain European countries for a noble of varying status. In many countries a viscount, and its historical equivalents, was a non-hereditary, administrative or judicial ...
. However soon after moving, the two buildings were handed over by the college authorities to the army for use throughout the
First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
as a military hospital, with the college students and staff using the old High Street buildings until 1919. The campus was opened after the war in October 1919 with the college using two buildings (now forming part of the Hartley Library) which housed classes and laboratory facilities for the three hundred students. Due to difficulties in selling them on for a reasonable price, the High Street premises remained part of the college until the mid 1930s when they were sold for a combined total of £8,000.


Inter-war and 1940s

By the end of the 1930s the College had expanded to nearly 1,000 students, requiring further buildings to be constructed. Those that were constructed were designed by Colonel R. T, Gutteridge and his firm, made of brick. However, despite this the college still made use of wooden temporary buildings, constructed during the First World War, and which were used as laboratories, plant houses and teaching buildings for the Geology, Music and Arts department right up until the 1960s. Due to lacking finances, and the more pressing need for accommodation, any new buildings constructed during this period were the result of legacies: the George Moore Botanical Laboratories were constructed in 1927 (later housed the Careers Advice service and demolished in 2011) and the Zoology building in 1931 (Now the EScience building) was the result of an anonymous donation of £8,000. The social experience was also improved with the creation of an assembly hall in the 1920s large enough to house the student population. During the late 1930s and 40s the university college again started to run out of room and so needed to improve their estate. New teaching buildings were constructed for Chemistry in 1937, Physics (Now occupied by the Estate department) in 1938 and Engineering in 1939. In addition, the Hartley library was built in 1935 following a donation of £24,250 (£1,460,500 in 2012) from the daughters of Edward Turner Sims. It was designed by Gutteridge and Gutteridge, with
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (9 November 1880 – 8 February 1960) was a British architect known for his work on the New Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and ...
, and plugged the gap intentionally left between the original two buildings with library facilities, seminar rooms and a new reception for the university college. All of these buildings had been constructed on the eastern side of University Road but in 1939 the Western side of the campus was developed with the construction of the West Building in 1939/40. Built on the site of Sir Sidney Kimber's brickyard, the building housed the refectory, common rooms and the
Students' Union A students' union, also known by many other names, is a student organization present in many colleges, universities, and high schools. In higher education, the students' union is often accorded its own building on the campus, dedicated to social, ...
and was further extended to include an assembly hall, suitable for performances and examinations, in 1948.Patterson, p. 205. Following the war, much of the University's capital budget went into purchasing new land, including the brickworks behind the West Building. At the same time the Institute of Education was given its own building in 1948, extensions were made to the Zoology building and the remainder of the Chemistry building completed.


1950s and Basil Spence masterplan

Following the creation of the University by royal charter in 1952, numbers at the University were set to increase again to around 2,500 by the mid 1960s. As a result, the university estate needed to expand and the inadequate facilities needed to be replaced. The end of the 1950s saw an explosion of building work in a whole variety of styles. On the West site, a new computer building was built in 1958 and a Tidal model of Southampton Water constructed in 1957 (now the
John Hansard Gallery The John Hansard Gallery is a contemporary visual art gallery and part of the University of Southampton. History The John Hansard Building was originally located in building 50 in the University of Southampton building coding scheme. It wa ...
), both designed by Ronald H Sims. In addition, Gutteridge and Gutteridge were undertaking several extensions to pre-existing buildings: the Physics building in 1960, the Education building in 1961 and the Library in 1959. Whereas the first two extensions were in the same style as the earlier building, the new Gurney-Dixon library extension was built in a modernist style, linking the three main buildings together and providing space for 150,000 books and 400 readers. The remaining buildings were built under the direction of Sir
Basil Spence Sir Basil Urwin Spence, (13 August 1907 – 19 November 1976) was a Scottish architect, most notably associated with Coventry Cathedral in England and the Beehive in New Zealand, but also responsible for numerous other buildings in the Moderni ...
, who was appointed as Consultant Architect in 1956. All of the buildings designed by him used mainly concrete and glass wrapped in mosaic and were each centred around a focal area either to the east or west of University Road, ignoring the road in doing so. The first buildings were completed in 1959 and included the Froude building, built for Social Sciences and located in the centre of Engineering Square, and the Lanchester and Tizard buildings for the Engineering, Electronics and Aerospace studies, located on the north of the square and connected to the pre-existing engineering facilities. The following year the extension of the west building was completed and linked in with a new
Senior Common Room A common room is a group into which students and the academic body are organised in some universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland—particularly Collegiate university, collegiate universities such as Oxford University, Oxford and Cambr ...
(now known as the Staff Social Centre). As a new decade dawned construction work started to become dominated by two large tower structures: the Graham Hills tower, built over 1960 and 1961, providing accommodation for Chemistry in the south east corner of Engineering Square and the Faraday tower, built between 1960 and 1963, for Engineering in the north east corner of Engineering Square. The next building to be completed was the Arts building (now the Law school) and adjoining Nuffield Theatre. Built between 1961 and 1963, the building allowed the Arts faculty to leave the central building for the first time and expand. Adjacent to Arts 1 is the Mathematics tower, built between 1963 and 1965 by Ronald H Sims in the
brutalist Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by Minimalism (art), minimalist constructions th ...
style and thus is notably different from the buildings around it with exposed concrete. Also around the same time, Oceanography received a new building north of the campus on Burgess Road (now housing part of Electronics and Computer Science since 1996), which was completed in 1965 and designed in brick by the Sheppard Robson Partnership. The pace continued with three buildings completed in close proximity in 1966 along the southern edge of the west side of the campus. These buildings were notable in that their layout differed from the plans laid out by Basil Spence a decade earlier, although the styling remained the same. These are the Physics building, complete with observatory, the Geology building (now renamed the Shackleton building and housing Geography and Psychology since 1996) and the Students' Union building. The final buildings matching the style of the Basil Spence Masterplan were the Arts II building (now Management and Music since 1996), built in 1968, a further extension to the Engineering accommodation in the form of the Wolfson and Raleigh buildings that same year and the Murray building, housing the Social Sciences departments, in 1975.


1970s and 1980s

Development slowed during the 1970s and 1980s as economic problems started to bite and it was during this period that the design concepts of the Basil Spence plan started to be dropped in favour of more conventional styles such as brick. The long-awaited Administration building, designed again by the Sheppard Robson Partnership, was constructed south of the library in 1970 and allowed these departments to move out of the main library building for the first time. This was followed in 1974 with the long-awaited opening of the Turner Sims Concert Hall. Resulting from a £30,000 bequest from Margaret Grassam Sims for this purpose, the new concert hall would allow music performances to move out of the increasingly busy Nuffield Theatre and into an environment specifically designed for music. The design of the hall itself was by staff from the University's
Institute of Sound and Vibration Research , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...
ensuring the hall's good acoustics. Following on from these high impact developments, the campus saw several smaller developments: Clarkson House, a small halls of residence suitable for disabled students and now the Early Years Centre, opened in 1978 just south of the Administration building and partly funded by the British Council for the Disabled, the Clarkson Foundation and the
Department of Health and Social Security The Department of Health and Social Security (commonly known as the DHSS) was a ministry of the British government in existence for twenty years from 1968 until 1988, and was headed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Services. His ...
. New facilities for Engineering were being constructed behind housing (now demolished) in University Crescent and were all of the industrial nature: the
R J Mitchell Wind Tunnel The R. J. Mitchell Wind Tunnel is a low-speed wind tunnel which is part of the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton. It is the largest wind tunnel in University ownership in the UK. It is named after famed ...
was relocated from
Farnborough Farnborough may refer to: Australia * Farnborough, Queensland, a locality in the Shire of Livingstone United Kingdom * Farnborough, Hampshire, a town in the Rushmoor district of Hampshire, England ** Farnborough (Main) railway station, a railw ...
and reconstructed in 1981, the A B Woods underwater laboratory in 1989 and the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory in 1991. The final building from this period was a small addition located on Burgess Road next to the Oceanography building. Now housing some of ECS, it opened in 1989 and was designed by Sheppard Robson.


1990-1998

Following the slow pace of capital development projects during the previous decade, projects started again at the end of the 1980s. The first building of the new decade to be completed was the new Mountbatten building, allowing the Electronics and Computer Science department to move out of the Engineering accommodation. Completed in 1991 it was designed by the John S Bonnington Partnership, Basil Spence's former practice and who had worked on the campus buildings since the 1960s, and featured a design of
aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...
cladding for the building that proved controversial.Nash and Sherwood, p. 273. That same year a Highfield Planning Group was formed under the direction of Professor
Tim Holt Charles John "Tim" Holt III (February 5, 1919 – February 15, 1973) was an American actor. He was a popular Western star during the 1940s and early 1950s, appearing in forty-six B westerns released by RKO Pictures. In a career spanning mo ...
to oversee how the University and the campus could develop further, given that the new Mountbatten building had used the last of the University's building plots.Nash and Sherwood, p. 274. As the University had now exceeded the Master Plan set out by Sir Basil Spence set out in the late 1950s, a new one had to be developed, so the University approached Chesterton Consulting to devise a new one. These new plans had to satisfy the planning laws on parking that required a certain number of new spaces for every development, requiring the plan to include three
multi-storey car park A multistorey car park (British and Singapore English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade (mainly Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a build ...
s and a reconfiguration of University Road.Nash and Sherwood, p. 276. None of these eventually occurred as the University and the Consultancy lobbied the council and were able to change the guidance to allow further development to be easier. To cement the end of Spence's master plan the next new building to be constructed on campus, the University Health Service in 1992, breached one of Spence's fundamental principles by blocking the flow of vegetation linking the western gardens with the
common Common may refer to: Places * Common, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland * Boston Common, a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts * Cambridge Common, common land area in Cambridge, Massachusetts * Clapham Common, originally com ...
. The new master plan also saw the expansion of the University onto the new
Avenue Campus Avenue Campus is a campus of the University of Southampton and is located in Southampton, England. It currently houses most of the University's Faculty of Humanities. It is located off The Avenue, borders Southampton Common and is less than a mi ...
, resulting in the Arts subjects to move to that new campus. As a result, the Arts buildings were vacated and it led to several departments changing buildings around 1995 and allowing the refurbishment of several of the 1960s building stock. In addition, a programme of new building works commenced: the Health Professional and Rehabilitation Sciences building was built in the North East corner of the campus in 1994 and featured a modern design by
Sir Norman Foster ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as p ...
; the Students' Union Retail Centre was added in 1995/6 and completed the side of a new social square outside the Union, all constructed and landscaped by London practice
Allies and Morrison Allies and Morrison LLP is an architecture and urban planning practice based in London and Cambridge. Founded in 1984, the practice is now one of Britain's largest architectural firms. The practice's work ranges from architecture and interio ...
; the Social Sciences Graduate Centre in 1997 (accompanying the Murray building) and the long-awaited Synthetic Chemistry building which was located adjacent to the existing chemistry buildings, replacing some older and smaller buildings on the site and thereby closing off Engineering Square, and was built between 1996 and 1998 according to the design of London architects the Wilson Mason Partnership.


1998-present

Following the lobbying of the council from the University and Chesterton Consulting, local planning laws were altered, removing the need for additional parking spaces on campus.Nash and Sherwood, p. 280 This change led to the introduction of the
Unilink Unilink is the branded bus service operated under contract and serving the University of Southampton in Hampshire, England. The service was created in 1998 following the university's expansion onto several new campuses, requiring new transport ...
bus service, and also made the Chesterton master plan completely obsolete. As a result,
Rick Mather Rick Mather (May 30, 1937 – April 20, 2013) was an American-born architect working in England. Born in Portland, Oregon and awarded a B.arch. at the University of Oregon in 1961, he came to London in 1963 and worked at the architectural firm L ...
Architects were hired to draw up a new masterplan for Highfield which was completed by 1998. It proposed that University Road, instead of dividing the campus, become a tree lined boulevard, with paths set back from the road and lined by simple white rendered buildings along the northern part of the campus. At this point in time, much of this northern part of the campus still contained residential buildings housing commercial services, such as banks, and the new master plan proposed demolishing these, rehousing the services into new buildings and using the space to significantly improve the landscape.Nash and Sherwood, p. 281 The first of these new master plan buildings was the Zepler building in 1998, housing an extension to Electronics and Computer Sciences, and the Gower building in 1999 which housed both student accommodation on the upper floors and commercial units on the ground floor and currently houses all the banks on campus and the bookshop. These two were designed by Rick Mather and Wilson Mason and used the white rendered style that Mather felt complemented both the brick buildings of the Gutteridge designs and the concrete designs of Basil Spence. It also created a new 'gateway' for the University along Burgess Road. Following these two buildings, several more buildings of the same design were erected across the campus: the Nightingale building was built along University Road in 2000 to house the School of Midwifery (and now the Faculty of Health Sciences as a whole), the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute building in 2003 next to the Murray building and an extension of the Hartley Library into Engineering Square, completed in 2004. Necessitating the demolition of some minor buildings in the square, the Library extension housed new facilities for Archives and Special collections, additional shelf and reader space. In addition to these, the building boom continued with several other buildings in their own style. The Students' Union building was extended in 2001 to include a new nightclub and cinema facility; the Jubilee Sports Centre was completed in 2004 housing a swimming pool, large sports hall and gym located on University Road next to the Students' Union; an extension to the south of the administration building was opened in 2005 to house a new Student Services Centre and a new building for the Institute for Sound and Vibration Research was constructed in 2006 among the Engineering buildings. The Jubilee Sports Centre and the Student Services Centre were both designed in brick to blend in with the nearby residential and Gutteridge designed buildings. In 2005 a fire broke out in the Mountbatten building, causing the ECS department to be crippled until replacement facilities could be found. As a result, the University needed to replace the building as soon as possible and took the opportunity to create a new campus masterplan, set to last until 2021. The new and replacement Mountbatten building was opened in 2008 and included new and updated clean rooms while still being an environmentally friendly design. The master plan also included the new EEE building, which was opened in 2007 as a space for ECS, the School of Education and as an Entrance building for the campus and features a glass wall showcasing an 'internal street'. The latest building to be added to the campus is the Life Sciences building, housing facilities for the Faculty of Natural and Environmental Sciences and the
Faculty of Medicine A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, M ...
. Designed by global architecture firm
NBBJ NBBJ is an American global architecture, planning and design firm with offices in Boston, Columbus, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Pune, San Francisco, Seattle, Shanghai, and Washington, D.C.. NBBJ provides services in archi ...
, the wood-clad building was created as a direct result of the
Boldrewood Campus Boldrewood Innovation Campus is one of the University of Southampton’s campuses, located in Bassett, Southampton. The newly built campus is a centre where business, research and education coexist in engineering sciences, maritime engineerin ...
redevelopment and the need to rehouse the faculties based on that campus. Completed in 2010, it has been recognised by the
Royal Institute of British Architects The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its royal charter granted in 1837, three suppl ...
.


Location

The campus is located in the Highfield area of
Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...
and is bordered by
Southampton Common Southampton Common is a large open space to the north of the city centre of Southampton, England. It is bounded by the districts of Shirley, Bassett, Highfield and Portswood. The area supports a large variety of wildlife, including one of th ...
along its western edge and Burgess Road on its northern edge. It is dissected by the north/south University Road, splitting the campus into East and West sections. The area surrounding the campus is mainly residential in nature. The campus is served by the
Unilink Unilink is the branded bus service operated under contract and serving the University of Southampton in Hampshire, England. The service was created in 1998 following the university's expansion onto several new campuses, requiring new transport ...
U1, U2, U6 and U9 routes that connect the campus to the
Airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...
, Wessex Lane, Glen Eyre and other halls of residence, the City Centre and the University's satellite campuses at
Southampton General Hospital Southampton General Hospital (SGH) is a large teaching hospital in Southampton, Hampshire, England run by University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust. History The hospital was founded in 1900 as the Southampton Union Infirmary in Sh ...
and the
National Oceanography Centre The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) is a marine science research and technology institution based on two sites in Southampton and Liverpool, United Kingdom. It is the UK’s largest institution for integrated sea level science, coastal and d ...
. All routes stop at the Unilink interchange in the centre of campus. In addition to the Unilink services, the interchange is also served by
National Express Coaches National Express is an intercity and Inter-regional coach operator providing services throughout Great Britain. It is a subsidiary of National Express Group. Most services are subcontracted to local coach companies. The company's head office is ...
032 and 203 to
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
and
Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth is the most dens ...
.


See also

*
University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...
*
Avenue Campus Avenue Campus is a campus of the University of Southampton and is located in Southampton, England. It currently houses most of the University's Faculty of Humanities. It is located off The Avenue, borders Southampton Common and is less than a mi ...
*
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton The National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOCS) is a centre for research, teaching, and technology development in Ocean and Earth science. NOCS was created in 1995 jointly between the University of Southampton and the UK Natural Environment ...
*
Southampton General Hospital Southampton General Hospital (SGH) is a large teaching hospital in Southampton, Hampshire, England run by University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust. History The hospital was founded in 1900 as the Southampton Union Infirmary in Sh ...
*
Winchester School of Art Winchester School of Art is the art school of the University of Southampton, situated 10 miles (14 km) north of Southampton in the city of Winchester near the south coast of England. History The Winchester School of Art was founded in 187 ...
*
Boldrewood Campus Boldrewood Innovation Campus is one of the University of Southampton’s campuses, located in Bassett, Southampton. The newly built campus is a centre where business, research and education coexist in engineering sciences, maritime engineerin ...
*
Highfield, Southampton Highfield is a suburb of Southampton, England. The suburb is situated to the north of the city centre, and is bounded by (clockwise from West) Southampton Common, Bassett, Swaythling and Portswood. Highfield is home to the main campus of the Un ...


References


External links


University of Southampton
{{coord, 50.9359, N, 1.397, W, display=title 1914 establishments in England University of Southampton University and college campuses in the United Kingdom Areas of Southampton