Avenue Campus

Avenue Campus is a campus of the University of Southampton and is located in Southampton, England. It currently houses most of the University's Faculty of Humanities. It is located off of The Avenue, borders Southampton Common and is less than a mile from the University's main Highfield Campus.

Prior to the campus site being occupied by the University, the site was home to Taunton's School, a secondary school for boys, of which the main building still stands as part of the main campus building. The foundation stone of the main building was laid in 1925 and the building opened a year later at a cost of £48,286. In 1969, it was reorganised as a sixth form college for boys and renamed to Richard Taunton College. The college remained on the site until 1993 when they moved to their present site on Hill Lane, on the opposite side of Southampton Common.

In December 1993, the University bought the site from Hampshire County Council for £2 million as a means of expansion. At the time, the University was seeking to expand, but due to the then planning laws the University could not expand its Highfield campus without accommodating a large number of car parking spaces in the form of three multi-storey car parks. As a result, the sought solution was to expand onto another campus and the former Taunton's school was chosen due to its close proximity to Highfield. In 1994, the London company Hawkins Brown was appointed to design the refurbishment of the old school buildings. These included the creation of a glass fronted courtyard, a large lecture theatre being installed in the old assembly hall, a cafe in the old gym and the extension of the building to include another lecture theatre and a wing to house the academic's offices. The building was completed and occupied from late 1996 ironically soon before the requirement for car parking was removed due to a change in planning regulations that allowed instead for an improved public transport network.

The campus further expanded with the construction of the Archaeology building, opened on 10 October 2006 by Coldplay member Will Champion, who had close connections to the Archaeology academics. The building cost £2.7 million.

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