The focal point of Bitterne today is the former location of Bitterne Village (and is still occasionally referred to by that name), but the village is predated by the settlement at
Bitterne Manor, the site of the original Roman settlement of
Clausentum, the forerunner of today's City of
Southampton. Bitterne is not mentioned in the
Domesday Book but first appears in a late 11th century entry in the
Bishop of Winchester's register as
Byterne. A new estate was built in 1760, known then as Bitterne Grove and today housing
St Mary's Independent School. A number of workers' cottages were erected to support the estate and the farming activities at Bitterne Manor and
Townhill Park; the cottages were in the Mousehole area of Bitterne. In the 1790s, frequent royal visits to Southampton encouraged a spate of land-buying in the area, and further estates were added to the Bitterne area, including Ridgeway, Sydney Farm and
Midanbury Lodge.
Townhill Park House was also built around this time, and Chessel House was built in 1796 by David Lance. Aware that access to his land was poor, Lance encouraged the building of a
bridge over the
River Itchen linking Bitterne Manor to
Northam, and another bridge over the
River Hamble at
Bursledon, with a road linking the bridges meeting another new road, to
Botley, at the location known as the centre of today's Bitterne. Construction of this new road and the bridges was completed in 1801. Although this new junction on an important communications route would eventually stimulate the growth of Bitterne Village, an account of 1826 mentions only the estate houses and not any hamlet or collection of cottages. By the 20th Century, Bitterne Village was swallowed up by fast expanding
Southampton. During the 1950s, Bitterne underwent extensive renovation, with the destruction of Victorian cottage housing areas to be replaced with flats and estates on the old farm land. The Angel pub went to be replaced by Sainsbury's, the Methodist church by Lloyds Bank (with the Methodists joining with the Anglican church). During the 1980s, work was carried out to bypass the bottleneck of the main high street by looping the A3024 from the top of Lances Hill eastwards through some of the poorer housing to a new junction with the Hedge End road and demolishing the old post office and United Reformed Church. This enabled the pedestrianisation of the old high street. == Government ==