Wessex Lane Halls - South Stoneham House

South Stoneham House

South Stoneham House was acquired, with South Hill (situated some two miles northwest of Wessex Lane), in 1920 to house male students at University College Southampton. It was originally the manor house of the Parish of South Stoneham, which stretched along the River Itchen from the Bargate in Southampton City Centre to Eastleigh. The house itself was constructed in 1708, as the family home of Edmund Dummer, the former Surveyor of the Navy, and has been attributed to Nicholas Hawksmoor, while its gardens were laid out after 1722 by Capability Brown (though very little of the original landscaping remains).

Tradition prevailed in the house, with a collegiate atmosphere as gowns were expected to be worn to dinner and lectures and curfews were enforced.

The South Stoneham regime was also 'distinctly paternalistic. A bell was rung at 5.45 each evening and everyone settled in silence to study until another bell two hours later released us for dinner. At 10 o'clock another bell called us to prayers. Half an hour later the warden came round to all the bedrooms to check that everyone was in bed.'

— Ernest Holmes, The University of Southampton, An Illustrated History

By 1924, there was distinct pressure on space in the halls of residence, and it was clear that more rooms were needed. The existing halls were full and so South Stoneham and South Hill were extended by covering their outbuildings.

During the Second World War, the Highfield location of the College meant it was directly in the war zone itself. With Southampton being attacked, the halls of residence were also under siege: at South Stoneham windows were blown in by bombs. For much of this time, the College operated a School of Navigation, based in the communal rooms of Stoneham House.

In 1964, a concrete tower extension was added to the hall, incorporating a bar and dining hall area, both now out of use. The extension was designed as a stop-gap measure until the full development of the Montefiore and Glen Eyre sites could be pushed through, with an anticipated lifespan of just 15 years. Four decades on and the tower has only recently been removed from the University's housing stock. South Stoneham currently has 180 rooms over its 17 floors (16 of which are residential), although it is all closed to the public now. When Stoneham was open, residents were part-catered for and ate in Connaught's Galley Restaurant. Residents shared small kitchen and bathroom facilities. Much controversy had surrounded the continuous use of South Stoneham Tower and in 1997 a large wooden collar was added to the base of the tower to prevent crumbling concrete falling onto staff and students below. As the tower was originally built using jack building techniques (i.e. the top story was constructed first, jacked up, and the next story added below) and made extensive use of asbestos, its decommission and deconstruction has provided a technical stumbling block to redevelopment of the South Stoneham site. Physical disassembly would be hugely expensive, while explosives cannot be used due to the proximity of private houses and the Grade II listed South Stoneham House. The future of Stoneham tower is uncertain, though it will not be used for accommodation again due to it being deemed unsafe in 2012.