Sidney Heath

“ As a whole, this Cathedral of Winchester is a vast building, simple almost to a fault, yet one that possesses a solemn repose unspeakably restful to mind and spirit—a sense of undisturbed harmony and refined yet massive simplicity. Towards eventide the shadows of the turrets and pinnacles creep, day by day, over the surrounding bands of greensward, their cool greys advancing inch by inch until they reach the spacious pavements, whereon they cast the symbols of our Christian faith in ruddy trefoil-headed slants of glory. ”

“ No groups of buildings are in their way more charming or more impregnated with human associations than the famous episcopal foundation of St. Cross—an asylum of peace and rest, comfort and repose, to those who find shelter within its ancient walls, and a standing monument to the memory of the pious Henry de Blois and the princely churchman, Cardinal Beaufort. Winchester, like many an English city, would be shorn of much of its interest were this benevolent institution to be removed. ”

“ With few exceptions, practically the whole of Wykeham's work, both here and at Oxford, remains much as he left it; so that, good bishop, wise administrator, generous founder, and pioneer educationist though he was, it is mainly as a munificent builder and architectural genius that his fame has lived in the past, and will continue to live in the future. ”

“ Other literary associations of the Winchester country are those furnished by Hursley, where John Keble was vicar; by Otterbourne, the home for many years of Charlotte Yonge; and by Eversley, where Winchester's immortal son, Charles Kingsley, lies buried.
Each succeeding visit to Winchester can only strengthen one's love for the city, and one's reverence for the Cathedral in its midst. Our pilgrimage of Winchester the beautiful is over. ”

“ The fact that they cannot be proved to have happened is more than half their charm, and our garden of romance, with its beautiful flowers of chivalry, is infinitely better to live with than the dry and parched fields given over to the cultivation of nothing but facts. ”

“ Mary's College and the cathedral at Winchester, and at New College, Oxford, originally founded as "St. Maries' College of Winchester at Oxenford", marks a very decided epoch in the development of English architecture. His works, in an architectural style found nowhere but in England, are the outcome of a mind free from triviality, and full of common sense. His buildings are admirably suited to their purpose, and at first sight they appear to be so simple in design that it has been suggested that Wykeham cared more for the constructive than the artistic side of building. ”

“ It seems a place where no worldly thought, no pride, or passion, or irreverence could enter; a spot where, as a modern writer has beautifully expressed it, a good man, might he make his choice, would wish to die. ”

“ Dean Kitchin writes: "One cannot look at his effigy, as it lies in his stately chantry, without noting the powerful and selfish characteristics of his face, and especially the nose, large, curved, and money-loving. The sums Beaufort had at his disposal were so large that he was the Rothschild of his day. More than once he lent his royal masters enough money to carry them through their expeditions."
The mortuary chests are certainly among the most interesting things possessed by any English cathedral. ”

“ The general air of peace and quietude, the grass-bordered walks, the stately church, all contribute to convey an appeal which is almost sacred in its simple eloquence. In the words of one who loved it well: "No one can pass its threshold without feeling himself landed, as it were, in another age. ”

“ So it came about that in 1486 Bishop Waynflete was compelled to reduce the recipients of Beaufort's charity to one priest and two brethren. Fortunately, St. Cross was spared at the Reformation, and its endowments were not confiscated. The Vicar-General reported that there were "certain things requiring reformation", and that sturdy beggars were to be "driven away with staves"; also that the Lord's Prayer and the Creed were to be taught in English, and that relics and images were not to be brought out for the devotion of pilgrims. ”

“ The first to be seen on entering the nave from the west is that of Wykeham, whose faith in the solidity of Norman building was so great that he did not hesitate to cut away more than a third of the two nave pillars between which it is placed. Within the chapel, said to have been built on the site of an altar to the Virgin, is the effigy of the bishop-builder, with flesh and robes coloured "proper", as the heralds say ”

“ In 1446, Cardinal Beaufort, Wykeham's successor in the see, added a new foundation to St. Cross, to be called "The Almshouse of Noble Poverty". De Blois's charity had been intended to benefit the very needy; this of Beaufort's was designed for those who had fallen upon evil days after a life of ease and comfort. There were to be two priests, thirty-five brethren, and three sisters. The brethren were to be of gentle birth, or old servants of the founder. ”

“ It was during the reign of Athelstan that the redoubtable Guy, Earl of Warwick, returning to England in the garb of a palmer from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, found the Danes besieging Winchester in great force, and King Athelstan unable to find a champion willing to meet the Danish giant, Colbrand, in order to decide the issue by single combat. The Earl, retaining his disguise as a palmer, begged the king to let him appear as the English champion. ”

“ The difficulty of the work is realized when we consider that it takes a whole month to underpin 4 feet of foundation. Owing to the cramped space and the darkness three weeks are spent in excavation; after which the divers require a week to place the concrete and cement in position. That so national a heritage will be saved, for the delight of our own and the instruction of future generations, must be the wish of all true lovers of the great building achievements of the past. ”

“ At the opposite end of the hall is a screen with the minstrels' gallery above, whence, on high days and holidays, the Brethren were enlivened with music during their feastings. The chief festivals of the year were All Saints' Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Twelfth Day, and Candlemas Day, on which occasions the Brethren had "extraordinary commons, and on the eve of which days they had a fire of charcoal in the Common Hall, and one jack of six quarts and one pint of beer extraordinary, to drink together by the fire. ”

“ Henry IV was forgiven a debt of five hundred pounds, and was to have a pair of silver-gilt basins, ornamented with double roses, which were probably given to Wykeham by Edward III, as a special mark of his favour. So we take leave of this master builder and munificent bishop, whose motto "Manners makyth man" is known the world over. The inscription on his tomb tells us of his works, but Wykeham needs no inscription so long as the stones of the Cathedral hold together, and his two fair colleges raise their buttressed walls beside the waters of the Isis and the Itchen. ”

“ There is always some truth in these old legends, in spite of the frills and embellishments added by the later chroniclers, and the history of our land would be poor reading indeed if we banished the romantic legends merely because they are not confirmed by such dry-as-dust evidence as alone will satisfy a certain section of scientific compilers, whose minds can perceive neither truth nor beauty underlying ancient legends and traditions. ”

“ Near the church at one time was an open space called the Square, where were situated the Pillory and Whipping Post. The palace of William I is said to have occupied this site, and St. Lawrence's Church may possibly have been the private chapel of the royal residence. A fragment of Norman masonry gives a certain amount of probability to the supposition, while at the beginning of last century some workmen excavating in Market Street came across the foundations of an ancient tower, of great thickness and strength. ”

“ The bridge at the foot of the High Street marks the former limit of the navigability of the river, and is the reputed site of the legend concerning St. Swithun and the old woman to whom the saint restored her eggs.
Before the advent of the railway, that great destroyer of our ancient waterways, the Itchen was crowded with barges making their way from the maritime port to the inland city; for, like so many of our old British settlements, the site of Winchester was determined by the natural conditions of the land which could be utilized for the purposes of defence. ”

“ With the completion of Winchester College, Wykeham turned his attention to the Cathedral, although he was then seventy years of age. He lived to see his munificence bearing good fruit, and his foundations flourishing in reputation and usefulness; so that when he lay down to die, on September 27, 1404, in his palace of Bishops' Waltham, he could look back to a long life spent in the service of his Maker. The funeral procession moved slowly along the ten miles that separated palace from Cathedral through crowds of people mourning his loss. ”

“ For the architectural student the plan of the cathedral is not the least interesting feature of the building, for although it has an ambulatory which is semicircular internally, the plan is in other respects rather exceptional. It is what architects call a periapsidal plan, meaning that its eastern termination contains a processional aisle or ambulatory, designed mainly for the purpose of allowing a procession to pass round the high altar without entering the presbytery. In the crypt of Winchester Cathedral the plan of the early Norman church may be seen sui generis. ”

“ If the claim of Canterbury to be the "Mother City" of the Anglo-Saxon race be granted, few will deny to Winchester the honour of being her eldest and her fairest daughter. A royal city was this when Birinus, the apostle of Wessex, came hither in 634, on his way to the Oxfordshire Dorchester, to baptize the King of the West Saxons; and in 679 the episcopal see was established, a cathedral built, and a monastic house attached to it. ”

“ Although clearly seen in the wold of Surrey and the weald of Kent at the present time, it must be confessed that but faint traces of the Pilgrims' Way remain in Hampshire, although early chroniclers speak of an old road that led direct from Winchester to Canterbury. The great concourse of pilgrims to St. Swithun's shrine caused Bishop Lucy to enlarge much of the church, and in the reign of the first Edward the building still known as the Strangers' Hall was erected by the monks of St. Swithun for the poorer class of pilgrims, who here found food and shelter for the night. ”

“ And up the rising towards the west, on either side of the ancient Roman road from the eastward gate of the city, the houses of the citizens began to cluster into a street, with here and there a stone-built dwelling, and the rest made of that 'wattle and dab' construction, of which from time to time examples are still laid bare in the city. ”

“ On the death of Elmstan, in 852, Swithun was appointed his successor in the see, when, in addition to erecting several churches, and building a stone bridge over the Itchen, he appears to have enlarged and beautified the Saxon cathedral built by Kynewalch when Winchester became the seat of a bishopric in 679. The site of this Saxon church is considered to have been a little to the north of the present cathedral, which is a Norman building commenced by Walkelin a few years after the Conquest. ”

“ Swithun's, he was eventually recommended to Bishop Edington, who appears to have appreciated the great talent for architecture shown by young Wykeham. Edington himself was no mean builder, and he had already begun to rebuild the west front of the cathedral, and to transform the nave from the Norman to the Perpendicular style, a transformation that was to be completed by Wykeham when he succeeded his old master in the episcopacy. ”

“ WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL FROM THE DEANERY GARDENS
Foreign pilgrims coming from Normandy and Brittany, on their way to the shrine of St. Swithun, or to that of St. Thomas of Canterbury, would land, many of them, at Southampton, and journey to Winchester, there to await other bands of pilgrims bound for the great Kentish shrine. This was the route taken by Henry II when he did penance before the tomb of the murdered Becket, in July, 1174. ”

“ Besides this, he provided for a hundred poor men to be supplied daily with dinner. Bishop Toclyve, de Blois's successor in the see, added to the charity the feeding of yet another hundred poor men daily; and it has been said, on somewhat slight evidence, that the poorer scholars of Winchester College dined without fee in the "Hundred Men's Hall". ”

“ Wykeham's idea in founding these two colleges was one for which he had no precedent before him, so that his design was to a large extent in the nature of an experiment. His idea, of course, was to enable those who proceeded from the Winchester to the Oxford College to receive a systematic and continuous education. Where Wykeham led, others were not long in following. Two of his successors in the see of Winchester, Waynflete and Fox, gave to Oxford the beautiful colleges of Magdalen and Corpus Christi respectively. Archbishop Chichele, one of Wykeham's first scholars, built St. ”