The Gothic Cathedral of Winchester is an easy walk from Winchester train station with lots of options for coffee on the way. The city of Winchester is easily accessible by train from London in just a couple of hours heading south-west, so you can do it in a day trip.
Winchester is Europe’s longest Gothic cathedral. From west door to east end measures about 558 ft (170 m), giving it the longest nave and overall length of any Gothic cathedral in Europe.
Bishop Walkelin, kinsman of William the Conqueror, started the present building in 1079. In the 14th-15th centuries architect William Wynford refaced Walkelin’s massive Norman nave in Perpendicular Gothic, creating the soaring arcade and fan-vaulted ceiling visitors see today.
One of my favourite photos to take in Gothic Cathedrals — looking directly up from the middle of the nave!
It was a royal wedding venue when Queen Mary I married Philip (later Philip II of Spain) in the cathedral on 25 July 1554. The photo below looks toward the high altar.
Sir George Gilbert Scott’s open-work oak choir screen (1875) was carved as a memorial to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, marrying Victorian craft to 13th-century-style tracery. Replacing a solid stone pulpitum, it leaves the Gothic vista clear from nave to high altar while still marking the quire’s liturgical boundary.
Looking up while walking under the choir screen.
The high altar in more detail below. The Great Screen (stone reredos) is a lace-like wall of Caen stone carved between about 1450 and 1476. Rising 11 metres and packed with intricate canopies and niches, it is one of the largest and finest Gothic reredoses in England.
The original medieval figures were smashed in the Reformation and again during the Civil War. Between 1870 and 1899 architect G. F. Bodley, sculptor Thomas Nicholls and others supplied 56 new statues from the Virgin Mary to Queen Victoria, restoring the screen’s tiered iconography.
The Winchester Tapestries by Maggi Hambling were dedicated in 2013, and add a modern touch to the ancient altar.
Mortuary chests in the choir hold mingled bones believed to include Alfred the Great, King Cnut, William Rufus and other early rulers of Wessex and England.
The 12th-century Winchester Bible is displayed in the cathedral’s Kings & Scribes gallery. It’s an illuminated Romanesque bible (c. 1150-1175), the largest surviving English Bible of its age. No photos allowed, but you can see images here on Wikipedia.
Below are the ornate choir stalls with the blue sky and stars of heaven.
The novelist Jane Austen was buried in the north nave aisle after her death in July 1817. A ledger-stone and later a memorial brass mark the spot.
The 11th-century crypt regularly fills with groundwater in winter; Antony Gormley’s life-size sculpture Sound II stands ankle-deep when it does. I walked in there alone and it was super atmospheric!
Between 1906-1911 diver William Walker spent six years working in water-filled trenches under the walls, placing nearly a million bricks and 25,800 bags of concrete to stop the cathedral collapsing. There’s a memorial to him holding his diving helmet.
Bishop Godfrey de Lucy added a new retrochoir c. 1200–1220 to accommodate St Swithun’s shrine, an early example of the new Gothic style.
St. Swithun was a 9th-century bishop of Winchester (852-863), who chose to be buried outside the cathedral at his request. In 971, his remains were translated inside, sparking a legend of 40 days of rain and miracles. This led to his becoming the patron saint of Winchester, with his shrine attracting pilgrims and funding cathedral expansions. The shrine was destroyed in 1538, but a memorial now stands in his place. St Swithun is still invoked for rain and drought, and many churches worldwide are dedicated to him.
The medieval tiling in the retrochoir represent one of the most significant examples of its kind. Look down as well as up!
Samuel Wilberforce’s ‘tomb’ in Winchester Cathedral is actually a Victorian memorial—his body lies elsewhere.The angels on the back are particularly beautiful. The monument was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811 – 1878), Britain’s most prolific Gothic-Revival architect who also designed the Albert Memorial in London, and led the vast cathedral restorations at Ely, Salisbury, and Westminster Abbey.
Books about or set in Winchester
A Single Thread – Tracy Chevalier. Historical novel set in 1932: Violet Speedwell joins the “broderers” stitching kneelers for Winchester Cathedral and learns bell-ringing under its towers.
A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow – Laura Taylor Namey. YA contemporary in which Miami baker Lila is packed off to relatives who run an inn in Winchester, discovering English food, friends, and the looming cathedral.
The Winchester Bible – Claire Donovan. Scholarly monograph on the cathedral’s 12th-century illuminated Bible: patrons, artists, and the manuscript’s Romanesque style.
Winchester: From Prehistory to the Present — Tom Beaumont James. An account of ancient capital of Wessex, from prehistory onwards, based on archaeological as well as historical research.
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