WestQuay, Southampton: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

Southampton's main covered shopping centre, opened in 2000, anchored by John Lewis and Marks and Spencer, with nearly 4,000 parking spaces in two car parks at two different height limits and a restaurant and leisure quarter, Watermark, added to the south side in 2016. Four different things in Southampton have "West Quay" in the name and they are not the same place — the one with Decathlon is a different landlord entirely. Here is what Hammerson publishes, where its own opening-hours page contradicts itself two lines apart, and what nobody publishes at all.

Last checked 5 September 2026 · Opening times and store lists change — check with the centre before travelling.

WestQuay sits on Harbour Parade in the middle of Southampton, on reclaimed ground below the medieval town walls. It opened on 28 September 2000, it is anchored by John Lewis and Marks and Spencer, and in December 2016 it gained a second element — WestQuay South, marketed as Watermark — a restaurant and leisure quarter with a cinema and a bowling alley. The operator's site is westquay.co.uk, verified live and genuinely Hammerson's; west-quay.co.uk is an operator-held alias that redirects to it.

Before anything else, the name problem, because Southampton has four of them. There is (1) WestQuay, the covered mall this page is about; (2) WestQuay South, or Watermark, the 2016 leisure extension attached to it; (3) West Quay Retail Park on Pirelli Street, SO15 1BA, at westquayretail.com — a completely separate landlord, with about 700 spaces of its own, and Decathlon, Matalan and Furniture Village as its tenants; and (4) The Marlands, a different centre again. There is also Bargate Quarter, a redevelopment of a failed 1980s centre, in the same part of town.

This matters practically. The "4,600 parking spaces at West Quay" figure that circulates online is two different landlords' car parks added together. If you are going to Decathlon, you want Pirelli Street, not this page.

Get the satnav postcode right too. The postal address is SO15 1QF, but the operator publishes SO15 1ST specifically for drivers, and that is the one to use. Four postcodes circulate: 1QF the centre, 1QD an agent record, 1QE the John Lewis unit, 1ST satnavs.

Ownership is one of the rare cases where it is safe to say 100%. Hammerson has owned all of WestQuay since 7 November 2024, when it bought GIC's 50% for £135m, funded from the sale of its stake in Value Retail. The striking part is the arithmetic: GIC had paid £299m for that same half in July 2007. Hammerson bought it back for under half what it sold it for. There is one important qualification, which we set out below: that does not reliably extend to Watermark.

What follows draws on Hammerson's own pages and announcements, the centre's website, AccessAble's survey, Visit Southampton, Architecture Today, ACME's project text and Historic England's list entry for the town walls. Where two figures exist we have printed both and said who published each — and here the floor area exists four different ways.

Westquay's diverse tenant mix and offerings will provide these experiences and enable Westquay, which is already a prime regional mall, to continue generating good returns.

The essentials

Opening times

Checked on 3 September 2026, and this is the first centre we have looked at where the operator contradicts itself on a single page. The /opening-hours page gives Monday to Saturday 9am to 8pm, Sunday 11am to 5pm and bank holidays 9am to 6pm — and then, two lines below the table, states that "the majority of retail stores close by 7pm on Saturdays".

Two other sources side with the 7pm. The centre's own John Lewis page gives Saturday 9am to 7pm, and AccessAble — which surveyed the site under Hammerson's own account, so this is not an outside guess — records the same. Both rows are printed above because the operator has published both. Treat 7pm as the real Saturday closing time and anything later as a bonus; if a specific shop matters, ring 023 8033 6828 first.

The John Lewis page also gives Sunday as 10.30am to 5pm against the centre's 11am to 5pm — half an hour of browsing rather than a discrepancy worth worrying about.

There are no festive hours and no Easter hours at all. Nothing for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year, from the operator or from anyone else we could read. The centre's homepage and its /opening-times page could not be fetched, so if either of those carries something the others do not, we have not seen it.

Getting there

By road

Use SO15 1ST. That is the operator's own satnav postcode and it is deliberately different from the centre's postal SO15 1QF.

The getting-here page is unusually bare: it publishes no motorway junction, no A-road, no station name and no bus numbers. It gives the satnav postcode and tells you to use Google Maps or Citymapper. We are not going to fill that gap with a junction number the operator does not print, so postcodes it is.

Parking — and the two different height limits

There are 3,971 spaces across two car parks:

• Multi-storey — 2,484 spaces, 2.0m height limit.
• Podium — 1,487 spaces, 1.9m height limit.

Both heights are the operator's own published figures. The Podium's 1.9m is the trap: it is low enough to stop a roof box, a bike rack on the roof, or a taller estate car, and it is the car park many people are steered into. Check the sign before you commit to the ramp.

The car parks are ANPR, with tap-to-pay or card at the barrier, and no maximum stay is published. Hammerson publishes no tariff. A scale of £2.50 to £15, a statement that Blue Badge holders pay standard charges, and a figure of 91 accessible bays all come from hellosouthampton, a third party — a useful guide, but not the operator speaking.

On electric vehicles: the only evidence that charging bays exist at all is a car park term forbidding you from occupying an EV bay without charging. No count, no network, no power rating, no price.

By train

Southampton Central is the station, and no published walking time from it to the centre exists in any source that is not an aggregator. The operator does not give one, Visit Southampton does not give one, and we are not going to estimate one. What the operator does say is that the cruise terminals are "less than 10 minutes away by taxi", or a 15 to 20 minute walk — useful if you are killing time before a sailing.

By bus

None of this comes from Hammerson — it comes from Visit Southampton, because the operator publishes no bus information at all. QuayConnect runs every 35 minutes from Southampton Central (South Side) to Red Funnel's Town Quay via WestQuay, which makes it the obvious link between station, shops and Isle of Wight ferry. Other operators in the city are Bluestar, Unilink, Xelabus and Salisbury Reds.

By taxi

There is a taxi rank at WestQuay, per Visit Southampton.

Accessibility

Shopmobility is run by Southampton Voluntary Services, not by the centre, from Podium Level 0 on 023 8063 1263. Hours are Monday to Friday 09:15 to 16:00, last hire 14:00, and it is closed at weekends and on bank holidays — unusual, and worth planning around, because Saturday is when most people shop. A scooter or powerchair is £6 for members and £7 for non-members; a manual wheelchair £6 and £6.50.

There is a Changing Places toilet with RADAR key access. The operator places it on Level 1; AccessAble places it on Level 1 of the Podium — probably the same room described two ways, but we are printing both. A Cubbie sensory pod sits on Level 2, opposite Costa. A quiet time runs on Monday mornings: the operator says 9am to 11am, AccessAble says 9am to 10am. There is a hearing loop at Guest Services on Level 3, though AccessAble notes it is unsigned.

One finding from AccessAble's surveyor is worth quoting because nobody else will tell you: in the Level 3 accessible toilet, "the lateral transfer space is obstructed by a waste disposal bin", and the emergency pull cord was out of reach. That is a survey of a real room on a real day, and it is the sort of detail an operator page will never carry.

The shops

The letting agent's record gives 133 tenants with 20 units let or under offer. Other figures in circulation are about 126, and "over one hundred". Hammerson itself publishes no store count.

The anchors

John Lewis, on Level 2 and with its own postcode SO15 1QE, and Marks and Spencer. Both are trading. Hammerson's own announcement names Apple, Marks and Spencer, Pandora and Hugo Boss as headline tenants.

A warning about one source: the letting agent's anchor list adds Next, Zara, H&M, New Look, Waterstones, FatFace and Hollister but omits John Lewis entirely. That is a flaw in the agent's record, not a closure. John Lewis is there.

Leisure — Watermark

WestQuay South, marketed as Watermark, holds a Showcase Cinema de Lux with ten screens, including XPlus and Dolby Atmos, and a Hollywood Bowl. Both are named in Hammerson's own announcements, which also described Watermark as "the UK's largest dedicated restaurant and leisure complex" and said it was "95% let on opening". It adds about 24 restaurants to the centre — or "over 20", depending which Hammerson document you read.

What has arrived

• Garmin, 13 November 2024 — the brand's first UK store, 2,625 sq ft, with Jon Oliver, managing director of Garmin UK and Ireland, quoted at the opening. This is the best-dated arrival at the centre.
• Hugo Boss — announced 8 November 2017, 2,116 sq ft, with Iain Mitchell, then UK commercial director, quoted. Note the year. This is eight years old, and Hammerson's press-release index carries no dates on the listing page, which makes old announcements look current.
• Oliver Bonas — 12 November 2019.
• The White Company, Lovisa, Joules, Lush, Skechers, Liang Edinburgh and Russell & Bromley — all announced, but with no date and no size obtainable for any of them. Hammerson's press-release bodies are rendered in JavaScript and did not return text, and Insider Media, which covered several, is robots-disallowed.

What has gone — nothing we could source, in two rounds of looking

We could not source a single closure at WestQuay. The Daily Echo is blocked to us, Insider Media is robots-disallowed and The Business Magazine returned a 403. That is a failure of access, not evidence that nothing has closed, and we would rather say so than imply the centre has had no churn. The only churn evidence we have is the letting agent's 20 units let or under offer, one at 6,200 sq ft — units that size do not come free without something leaving.

The Debenhams that never was

One lead resolved firmly, and usefully, in the negative. WestQuay never had a Debenhams. Southampton's Debenhams was a standalone store on Queensway, in Queens Buildings, which had traded as Edwin Jones until 1973. That is a different building on a different street, and the site now carries proposals for around 600 flats from National Regional Property Group, with Allan Gordon, its managing director, quoted in Southampton City Council's investment news.

We say this plainly because the "empty Debenhams at WestQuay" line turns up regularly and has never been true.

Useful to know

Shopmobility is closed exactly when you want it

Monday to Friday, 09:15 to 16:00, last hire 14:00, closed at weekends and bank holidays. Southampton Voluntary Services runs it from Podium Level 0 on 023 8063 1263, and it charges £6 to £7. If you need it, you are shopping midweek.

Facilities worth knowing about

Wi-Fi is The Cloud. JOOS power banks can be hired on Level 2, by Zara and Five Guys, and Level 3 near Marks and Spencer. There is an Amazon Hub on Level 4. Toilets are on Levels 4 and 3 and Podium Level 2, with an inclusive facility on Podium Level 2; baby change on Level 1, parent room on Level 3. The centre runs the Safe Place scheme, on 023 8083 4854.

The Cubbie and the quiet time

The Cubbie sensory pod is on Level 2, opposite Costa, and there is a quiet time on Monday mornings — 9am to 11am per the operator, 9am to 10am per AccessAble.

No gift card page exists

We looked on westquay.co.uk and on hammerson.com and found no gift card page at all. We are reporting that as a thing we searched for and did not find, not as a statement that no gift card exists. Ask at Guest Services on Level 3.

Walk out into the medieval town

The best free thing here is on the other side of the wall. The Grade I listed medieval town walls run along the western edge of the site, and the walk from Bargate west to Arundel Tower and south past Catchcold Tower and Castle Water Gate takes minutes from the mall doors.

For cruise passengers

The operator says the cruise terminals are "less than 10 minutes away by taxi", or a 15 to 20 minute walk. If you have a few hours before boarding, this is where to spend them.

How it got here

WestQuay opened on 28 September 2000 to a design by BDP. Its construction cost has never been published, and nor has Watermark's. Construction News recorded five contractors bidding for the job on 15 May 1997; which of them won is unknown, which is a strange gap in the record of a building this size.

The site's real history is the wall behind it. The Grade I listed medieval town walls run along the western edge, under Historic England list entry 1340005, first listed on 14 July 1953, running from Bargate west to Arundel Tower and then south past Catchcold Tower and Castle Water Gate. Scheduled monument 1001927 overlaps the same structures.

Historic England's descriptions are worth reading before you walk it. Arundel Tower is "a round tower built early to mid C13 with another stage added probably 1377-79". Catchcold Tower is "an early C15 tower with three gunports, amongst the earliest in Europe" — early European gunports, thirty seconds from a Marks and Spencer. And the Castle Vault was "built to store the King's wines".

One thing to be clear about: Historic England says nothing whatsoever about the shopping centre. The listing is for the walls. We are not implying any heritage status attaches to WestQuay itself, and anyone who tells you otherwise is confusing the two.

The 2016 extension exists to solve a seven-metre problem. Between the old town on its ridge and the reclaimed ground below there is a level change of about seven metres, and it had cut the city off from its own waterfront. Architecture Today called that edge "an urban fault-line... neglected by the public and developers alike". ACME's own text on the project puts it another way: "the shoreline has become distanced from the local population, moving progressively further away from the medieval town walls that historically marked the waterfront".

ACME's answer was a set of terraces and promenades. Its director Friedrich Ludewig described them as "ways to encourage people down from the upper level to the lower without them even thinking about it", which is a fair account of what the place does when you are in it. Watermark opened in early December 2016, built by Sir Robert McAlpine, and won Leisure Project of the Year.

Ownership, and the one thing we will not say. GIC bought 50% of WestQuay in July 2007 for £299m, when the book value was £588m and net rent about £25m a year. Seventeen years later, on 7 November 2024, Hammerson bought that half back for £135m, funded from its disposal of Value Retail — under half what it had sold for. Hammerson has owned 100% of WestQuay since that date.

But Watermark is a separate transaction and it has not been closed out in public. In December 2016 GIC took 50% of Watermark for £47m according to Hammerson's own results announcement, or £48.5m according to Sharecast. The 2024 announcement refers only to "the remaining 50% stake in Westquay" and never names Watermark at all. Whether the 2024 deal swept up that interest is unresolved at primary-source level, so we will say Hammerson owns 100% of WestQuay and we will not say it owns 100% of WestQuay South.