The vaulted undercroft
The cellar that held the merchant's wine barrels around 1290, still standing with much of its medieval fabric.
A German bomb that fell on French Street in 1940 is what brought this house back. The blast tore off a later frontage and several centuries of alterations, and underneath was a stone-walled, timber-fronted house begun around 1290 by a merchant named John Fortin, who shipped his wine in from Bordeaux. What stands here now is one of the oldest merchant's houses left in England, and the only one of its kind to survive close to how it was first built. The idea the house explains so plainly is that a medieval trader lived on top of his goods. The ground floor is a shop opening onto the street, behind it a tall hall with a hearth, beneath it a vaulted undercroft for the barrels, and above it bedchambers, one of which juts out over the pavement in the manner of the time. English Heritage restored it between 1983 and 1985 to its mid-fourteenth-century state and filled it with loud replica furniture and painted wall cloths, so the effect is closer to a stage set than a museum. That is deliberate: houses of the period were never the faded brown we picture. Keep expectations honest. It is a small house you finish in thirty to forty-five minutes, the wooden stairs are narrow and steep, there is no room for a pushchair inside, and young children enjoy the cellar and the furnished rooms far more than the panels. The real obstacle is the timetable: entry is free, but the house opens from April to the end of October only, on Mondays from 10am to 1pm and on Fridays and Saturdays from 11am to 3pm, and it is shut entirely the rest of the year. Check the official website before you set off. So do not make it a destination in itself; fold it into a walk through the old town. Tudor House and its museum are two minutes away on foot, the Watergate ruin and the town walls are a short stroll away, and Southampton Central station is roughly a twenty-minute walk. If you are driving, the West Quay car parks nearby are the easy option. On a wet day, of which Southampton has plenty, it makes a good short shelter between two open-air stops.
The cellar that held the merchant's wine barrels around 1290, still standing with much of its medieval fabric.
Rooms dressed in bold replica colour that show how a fourteenth-century house really looked, not the faded version we imagine.
A ground floor open to the street and a bedchamber projecting over the pavement, the whole idea of a trader living above his stock.
58 French Street, Old Town, Southampton SO14 2AT
Tudor House is the bigger and richer of the two; this one is a complement, not a substitute. Since it is free and two minutes away, step in if it happens to be open as you pass, but do not rearrange your day for it or come to Southampton just for this.
Yes, for a short stop: the cellar and the furnished rooms appeal to younger children, and it never gets crowded even in July and August. But the stairs are narrow, a pushchair will not go in, and facilities are minimal, so treat it as a half-hour stop on an old-town walk and nothing more.