Marina View

It’s hard to believe that when I first moved to Southampton, Ocean Village marina had not been visualized, yet alone the waterfront home for an entire community.
Fifty years ago it was a ferry terminal, at that time operated by railway owned cross Channel ships, and soon after the home for then new car ferry services, operated by the old Norwegian owned Thoresen Car Ferry company to Le Havre and Cherbourg, later to be joined by Normandy Ferries to Le Havre and Caen, and later by Swedish Lloyd to Bilbao and Southern Ferries to Lisbon and Tangier.
Sadly, 20 years on, all these services had closed or moved to nearby Portsmouth which provided shorter crossing times to France. Stena Sealink tried to revive a link to Cherbourg, although from a different base in the docks, but it did not last long.
But it was the demise of the ferry services which brought about the transformation of this part of dockland into a marina for leisure boating, shops, restaurants, and a new home for the Royal Southampton Yacht Club on the waterfront.
The marina opened in 1986 with an old cargo shed alongside the dock providing the first shops and restaurants, and I can remember being there at the time. Today although the initial residential area, the marina itself, office complexes and the yacht club still remain, but fresh development now dominates the skyline around the marina, including the highest residential apartment block in Southampton.
I still have fleeting moments of nostalgia about the old days of the ferries, yet nowadays Yacht Club members, visiting yachtsmen and yachtswomen, have this view, arguably one of the most stunning outlooks from its restaurant and lounge to be found in the city.