Page "The Dell (Southampton)" Paragraph 3

The site on which the ground was built was described in Philip Brannon's Picture of Southampton, published in 1850, as " a lovely dell with a gurgling stream and lofty aspens "; the stream is the Rollsbrook which flows out of Southampton Common, running parallel to Hill Lane before now disappearing under Commercial Road and the Central Station, from where it is conduited under Southampton Docks into Southampton Water.

The land had been purchased in the 1880s by the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway to enable them to continue the line from Shawford via Otterbourne and Bassett into Shirley ( where a station was to be situated in what is now St. James ' Park, opposite St. James ' Church ).

From here the line would have travelled south across Hill Lane to run through the dell and then on an embankment and viaduct over Commercial Road and the London and South Western line before terminating on the Western Esplanade at the foot of Arundel Tower.

The dell was stripped of vegetation and the stream channelled into a conduit with work started on the embankment and viaduct, before the project was abandoned and the D. N. S. R.

obtained running rights over the L. S. W. R.

from Winchester into Southampton.