Winchester cathedral

Winchester cathedral

Winchester cathedral, notable for being one of the largest cathedrals in England, with the longest nave and greatest overall length of any Gothic cathedral in Europe, and Jane Austin's burial place, and that we trooped there once a year for the Peter Symonds founder's day service as requested in his will dated 20 April 1586. On one occasion I did a tour of its interior and remember the various ages of the building being explained: the oldest parts being the transepts with Norman-style round arches. The tour included climbing hidden spiral staircases and walking along a gang-way above the nave ceiling and being able to peep through holes to the nave beneath. Based on a nave width of about 14m (see plan and picture below), I estimate those holes to be about 3" in diameter.

Jane Austin - in memory

Not that Jane Austin does much for me. I do not think I have read any of her novels.

Winchester cathedral plan showing different ages

This is actually Salisbury cathedral but a similar idea

Peep hole in Winchester cathedral's nave ceiling

Another memory from school days is being berated by a history master for not knowing more of my local heritage specifically about the cathedral. Strange how one has to go to a foreign city to get interested enough to check out all its history. In a similar way I was blissfully unaware that my hometown was (and presumably still is) the centre of watercress production in the UK.

Classic multivibrator circuit

Oh - and the electronics shop. In Market Lane between the High Street and the cathedral was a small shop displaying electrical wares in its window. Inside was hardly a space to stand between shelves of stuff and equipment waiting to be repaired or collected. The owner, an older man, would sell you just one resistor if that's all you wanted, or would help you chose parts from his stock to make a simple design you offered. Like a multivibrator. It was of course my favourite Winchester shop.

The Buttercross, High Street

Apart from the Cadena cafe near the Buttercross. My mother would sometimes treat us and we would typically order mushrooms or cod's roes on toast. And their coffee ice cream, served in a metal bowl, was magical.

Temporary roof scaffolding

Back to the subject, this year they have been restoring the roofing, an operation which entails removing all the lead, melting it down and recasting for re-use.

When the Normans built Winchester Cathedral the area was basically a swamp.  To provide a foundation they placed a multilayer platform of beech trees over the peat of the bog.  Essentially the cathedral was built on a large raft that “floated” on a layer of sponge like peat.

Sound II sculpture

Not surprisingly the crypt floods each winter and there is now a sculpture of a figure entitled Sound II, designed to stand in water.

William Walker saviour

William Walker was the man who saved Winchester cathedral from collapse due to the wooden foundations rotting. A leading diver of his day who had trained at Portsmouth's naval dockyard, he worked tirelessly from 1906 until 1911 supporting the cathedral using more than 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks and 900,000 bricks. He worked in almost complete darkness in the peaty water up to 5m above his head.

Gospel Oak between Winchester and Alresford

Just to the north of the A31 half way between Winchester and my hometown Alresford lies Hempage wood and somewhere therein (though I have never seen it) is the Gospel Oak. This is how the story goes:

"William the Conqueror granted Walkelin as many trees in Hempage Wood as he could fell in three days, wherewith to roof the nave. The bishop called together carpenters innumerable and swept off the whole wood of oak trees, leaving nothing standing there save the traditional 'Gospel Oak' under which St. Augustine is said to have preached. The bare stem of this ancient oak still stands, and by it yearly, when bounds were beaten, the parish priest used to read, till quite lately, the gospel for the day. The solid trees thus carried to Winchester are still to be seen in the roof of the nave above Wykeham's stone groining, and they are as sound as when they were first hoisted up more than eight centuries ago, in 1086." Next time William Rufus (son of above) visited he is believed to have said: Have I gone mad? Surely I had a most delightful wood near Winchester?

Gospel Oak ~ 1920

Walkelin began work on a new cathedral church, the current Winchester Cathedral, in 1079. His transepts and crypt, though little else, are retained in the present building. The new cathedral was completed in 1093. Walkelin had caused its tower to be made as it is still to be seen (At the annalist's time, though the present tower is a later Norman construction).

Why were the mighty cathedral built? Ken Follett, author of  The Pillars of the Earth, says "But I come back again and again to the people who built the cathedrals. Those men and women were by modern standards, poor and ignorant. They lived in wooden huts and slept on the floor. Yet they created the most beautiful and awesome buildings the world has ever known. Human beings have the capacity to rise above mundane circumstances and touch the eternal."

The pictures in this post are not my own.