In one of our many post-lockdown day trips, as some restrictions eased in the UK, we had gone to Winchester back in May. I wrote about some surprises there, such as finding Jane Austen's grave, which I didn't know was in the cathedral there, but the one thing we didn't do at that time was take a look at the Winchester Bible, because we must have been feeling kind of frugal at the time, for some reason. So I had decided that if I needed another quick day drip sometime, I would head back to Winchester to see the Bible as I regretted not doing it at the time. It was probably for the best that it worked out this way, however. When we went initially, I thought the entrance fee was just to see the Bible, but it turns out that a tour of the Cathedral is included, and the tickets--just like at Bletchley--are good for a year. It's not a bad deal at all, but it does require more time than we would have had to spend when we first went.
The Winchester Cathedral has been standing for over 1000 years, albeit with additions and modifications. Unlike many old buildings, however, the changes have taken place through the centuries and are not the result of having been bombed in one of the wars. It went from a Norman-style church to have modifications that turned it into a Gothic-style church, for example. And various additions to the building have also been made. The original church built on the spot was erected in 650, called Old Minster. As a side note, having learned of the name of this building, it dawned on me that the word "minster" was a root word or some kind of suffix, but either way, it has its own meaning. The word minster is used to refer to a large or important church, often the main cathedral in a city, and in Old English, it specifically meant the church of a monastery. Old English was used from about 450 to 1150--during the time Old Minster was built--and stems from the Latin monasterium. So other places in England, such as Westminster, Axminster, Kidderminster, and Leominster were all founded around religious settlements.
One of the interesting artefacts we saw on the tour is the font (fountain), which has baptised kings and nobles and who knows how many everyday people, through the centuries. What fascinated me was the story depicted on the side of the font, shown in the photo. St. Nicholas, patron saint of children, saves a nobleman and his daughters, passing a bag of gold to each of them. As the font was brought over from Belgium in the 12th Century, I was interested by the fact that I was seeing much earlier stories and representations of the person we now call Santa Claus. If you'd like to read more about the font, you can do so here.
One thing that's much more common in Europe than back home is the practice of going on pilgrimages. These were often done by monks and nuns, and the practice continues today with many different kinds of people doing them, either for spiritual reasons or to take advantage of the paths carved out by hundreds of years of pilgrims and do it as a challenge and as a tourist. The Winchester Cathedral was no exception, becoming the destination point for pilgrims. As a result, a small chapel was built in the cathedral, designed to resemble the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. My husband has seen it before and confirmed that this little chapel does indeed look similar. There are frescos on the wall and a few rows of pews. There is also a staff hung at the doorway of the chapel that belonged to Frank Theodore Woods, the Bishop of Winchester from 1924-1932, who carried the staff, which is now carved with the names of all the parishes to which he walked and is displayed to commemorate his pastoral care and wide social concern, according to the plaque beneath the staff.
We were also shown, from the choir area, a mirror set up to reflect the length of the ceiling. It's thought that the church may have been designed purposely to resemble the hull of a ship, possibly because they are strong, and it was thought that it was a good structure that would withstand time. Whether or not it really was designed using a ship's hull technique, the designer was not mistaken as the church as stayed standing. Although sometimes, the foundations had to be fortified over the years as the ground beneath gave way for a variety of reasons. Another section of the ceiling had wood placed over it, something that was apparently common during the Victorian era.
One thing you might notice in the photo of the ceiling is the Quire, the intricately carved wooden part. The guide told us that apparently they were installed to help block out the wind as the monks standing there would get quite cold because it was a really drafty area. I couldn't understand how the addition
of the Quire would protect anyone from anything, and the guide mentioned the same thing. In any case, the carving work is beautiful, made to look like the kind of carving that was typically done by stone masons--to me, an even more amazing feat since I think stone could be much trickier to work with--and you'll find faces, beasts, and various foliage carved into the wood. The Quire is also one of the oldest medieval quires in England, and certainly one of the best preserved.
The last bit I noticed at the cathedral was a skin and bones sculpture of someone on their tomb. If you've ever visited cathedrals that have any sort of tourist appeal, you'll probably have seen that most, if not all, of them have tombs with the likeness of the person carved on top. Many kings and queens certainly have this, and sometimes you'll see this for various saints and other significant individuals. I was a little baffled by the way he was represented but was unable to find out any information about why he looks that way. All I can find is that he fell severely ill before he died, so perhaps his illness caused him to lose a lot of weight. I thought perhaps he had been on a hunger strike or was denying himself pleasures for some spiritual goal, but my hypotheses appear incorrect. He has quite the interesting history as a stateman and proponent of Catholicism during the time of Henry VIII, but that's too much detail for me to go into here. This is why I include links for further reading for those that are interested!
There are several other interesting tidbits about the church. While the church has remained standing for centuries, the same cannot be said of some parts of its contents. Certain artefacts have been destroyed, especially during anti-Catholic points in England's history as well as the anti-monarch era during which Oliver Cromwell seized power and deposed the monarchy during the English Civil War. Eventually the monarchy was restored, but paths of destruction have definitely left their mark in the church. Stolen or destroyed artefacts have been replaced with new artefacts in the sense of, for example, cubbies that contained statues of saints that were destroyed have since been covered up with a series of icons of Jesus and some of the disciples. Another interesting tidbit we learned was that parts of the church were really starting to crack and become unstable in the early 1900s. It was discovered, after digging holes around the foundations, that a series of beech trees had been laid down to function as the foundation, but when the way water was being diverted underground changed in the city of Winchester, it ended up flooding underneath that part of the church and softening the soil. A navy diver, William Walker, spent 8 hours a day for several months laying down bags of cement that were used to fortify the foundation and is credited with saving the church. It's quite the story! We also learned that Winchester was at one time the capital of England. William the Conqueror actually had a treasury in the cathedral, meaning all his gold and money and valuables were stored there. The door is not open to the public and seems to be used as some sort of office now, by the label on the door.
All this, and then we finally went to see the Bible and the exhibits in yet another part of the church, mostly on the second floor. We walked through a door that was 800 years old, painted green but with its original iron gilding to lead us to an elevator to take us to the exhibit. You get to read about the history of conquests in the region and the changes from Old Minster to Winchester, and they have some additional artefacts, like some carved creatures that used to adorn the top of the pipes on the pipe organ and a section that shows you how scribing would have been done on the Bible at that time. As it turns out, you can't actually take photos of the Winchester Bible, even without a flash! That was disappointing, but the cathedral does have a website with some photos and stories of the restoration process, so I recommend viewing it online. In this paragraph, I've
included a little album of the artefacts you can see, such as what kind of paper and ink was used and samples of other types of documents from the time. See the captions for details on those.
And if that weren't enough, during the tour, we also learned that we can view (from the outside) the house that Jane Austen was renting a room in when she died, and there is now a blue plaque outside to indicate that, so we went off to see it before heading home, spotting a quince tree along the way. There was a pretty rose tree across the street, so I took the photo from that vantage point and got one of the roses as well.
As much as it might be easy to be disappointed that the pandemic has prevented us from travelling in Europe as much as we might have wanted to this year, you can see why we have actually be quite satisfied with our many day trips from London. You don't have to go far to see some amazing sights and learn about interesting history. It's not that we aren't aware of how much history is here, it's just hard to keep up with it, so everywhere we turn, we find unexpected delights and curiosities. We look forward to more of them while we are here.
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