Southampton

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Southampton. A seaport which gave its name to Hampshire as early as 755, though it is no longer the county town. Saxon Hamwic was the chief port of the kingdom of Wessex; its successor, on a slightly different site, has been a major port since the 11th cent. Kings embarked there (including Henry V before Agincourt), and Venetian and Genoese ships traded there. It lost ground to London in Tudor and Stuart times, but recovered from the 1840s with new docks and the railway, and is now the leading British deep sea port on the Channel.

David M. Palliser

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