Bloggo Piccolo: A Day Trip to Winchester

In this post I am going to reference two works of art that will strike some of you, dear readers, as going from the sublime to the ridiculous. I leave it to your own judgement to decide which is sublime, which ridiculous, as we know that "ART" varies wildly from one person's taste to another's.


My first work of art is a pop tune (and I'll need my Rudy Vallee megaphone to do it justice):


"Winchester Cathedral,
you're bringin' me do-own
you stood there and watched as
my baby left town..."


No, that is not the reason I decided to visit a country town an hour's train ride west southwest of London, although I'll admit that the reason is slightly more complicated than it might seem. For indeed my prime reason to tour the country town of Winchester WAS its cathedral. Not that I'd ever been brought down by it. In my sordid past it took much less than an imposing medieval structure to bring me down, certainly as far as women are concerned! A stupid phrase, a seemingly innocent discovery, a slight misunderstanding were enough to start any relationship of mine tumbling. Which is why I retired from that field of battle many years ago.


But the cathedral at Winchester, 

Winchester Cathedral

while not as stunning, at least from a glimpse at its exterior, as those in York or Durham, two examples that I discussed in earlier postings, is historically important, and as another old rock tune goes "You can't tell a book by lookin' at its cover." That is NOT the second work of art I was referring to (thank God). Dottore Gianni is planning to keep you in suspense for a wee bit regarding numero due. I think you'll be able to tell from a photo or two that the interior is a stunner.


But first some history. Winchester was a very important city in the old days...and I mean very old days. Like York, Colchester and London, Winchester, then named Venta Belgaum, was an important city in the days of the ancient Roman empire, and similar to the others it entered a period of decline when the Romans left. But beginning in the late seventh century Winchester became the capital city of the area of England known as Wessex. 

Alfred the Great in Winchester

It remained the capital during the reign of the great Anglo-Saon King Alfred the Great, who was buried at Winchester; and even became capital of England itself until well after the Norman Conquest. It was here that William the Conqueror's book of records called The Domesday Book, was written, and it was here that William had a cathedral built just adjacent to an older church, as he did in many of the cities he now ruled over. Castles and cathedrals! The former built to display the temporal power of the new Norman rulers and to protect them from local uprisings; the latter built in the Norman, elsewhere Romanesque, style to demonstrate the spiritual power of god in general and the church in particular, and also to keep the locals looking up at heaven rather than looking around and brooding on their miserable lives.


After a time London, with its powerful position on the mighty River Thames, displaced Winchester as capital, and Winchester nestled down into a quiet country town whose mostly well-healed residents seem to enjoy, from my brief peek at the place, quite the idyllic existence.


Back to the cathedral, in fact to the interior of the cathedral, which like the old rock song and much older adage about a book and its cover, struck me as quite stunning. Before I let you enter, however, have a look above at the photo of the exterior. While it is for the most part well done -

West front of the cathedral

I like the simple but elegant west front, from where tourists and congregation enter the cathedral. It seems to me to be missing one vital element. It looks as if someone just decided to stop work on the building at some point, leaving a generally lovely structure with a squat little excuse for a tower. Rather than featuring a tall, powerful focal point, as you will see demonstrated at Durham, for example, whose cathedral was built at roughly the same time, I at least am left wondering, "Where's the rest of it?"


The interior, however, boasts the longest nave of any cathedral in Europe.

The nave of the cathedral

And it shows! In fact it soars! Not literally so tall as those in some gothic cathedrals, the nave of Winchester seems gigantic, because of its length, because of the beauty of its ribbed vaults, but also in contrast to its comparably puny-looking exterior. I visited on a beautiful sunny day, which lit the clerestory brilliantly, and that only increased the effect. 


The white walls of the nave turn dark (you can see the change at the far end of the photo just above) in the quire or choir, the oldest substantially unaltered quire of any English cathedral, whose walls abound with wood carvings of foliage and beasts. Beyond the quire  lies the great altar, and beyond that the east end houses a small Lady Chapel and two still smaller chapels, one on each side of it. In the east end there are graves of several early bishops of the cathedral, and throughout you can find graves of early English kings, including Canute.

Taken from the cathedral's quire, another look down the great
nave of Winchester Cathedral

More recently the novelist Jane Austen was buried here, and her simple stone in the floor of the north side of the nave has been embellished by a memorial on the wall of the nave, above which is a stained glass window in her honor, very nicely done in my opinion. But!

There are also panels near her grave that tell "the Jane Austen Story." You can't blame the cathedral for capitalizing on a very famous permanent tenant, but even though I'm a great fan of Austen's writing, it seems to me that telling her story, or at least the way the powers that be in the cathedral chose to tell her story, is one of the few tacky aspects to a place I otherwise greatly admired. Sell a booklet in the cathedral shop, place the story next to the cathedral cafe, but allow her stone, the memorial and the window to honor her in the cathedral's otherwise non-commercial nave.

Outside the cathedral, and I mean JUST outside the cathedral, the Winchester Christmas Market had opened less than 24 hours of my arrival, and on midday Friday it was a-bustle! 

In the shadow of the cathedral,
stalls of the Winchester Christmas Market

Much smaller, and a good bit less cheesy (though cheese was for sale in at least one stall) than Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, the Winchester market also featured stalls of candy and chocolate, an ice-skating rink, upscale and downscale Christmas gifts, and food stalls which ranged from popcorn to full pork or turkey dinners. In fact as I first approached the cathedral I was surprised to see crowds bustling towards it. Instead of going into the cathedral, for workship or for tourism, hordes of people were heading, some of them rather rudely charging, straight for the nearby market, entered just to the right of the cathedral's west front.




After the cathedral the town itself was charming, though perhaps not so unique and packed with pleasures as the pedestrian zones in York or Brighton. In the high street there was a farmers' market, alongside stands of knick-knacks and antiques and warm things to wear. 

Farm market on Winchester's High Street

I doubt that sales of the last were going well, as we were blessed with another unusually balmy day for late November, in fact rather than being desperate for a wool scarf or socks I was wishing I had a lighter jacket on. I nearly bought some carrots, red and yellow peppers, and raspberries, as the prices were much more friendly than those in London groceries, but I didn't want to lug bags around the rest of the day, so I just strolled and nosed around the stalls, and had lunch in the shadow of the statue of Alfred the Great in a restaurant called Alfie's. 

What's it all about? Alfie's!

Not, as I first thought, named for the Michael Caine movie, but for that early king of England! I'm not sure the great Alfred would approve, although there is something endearing about so diminutive a nickname for a famous monarch. 


At Alfie's I decided on their homemade shepherd's pie, which along with most of the other "mains" was priced at a very inexpensive £6.25, washed down with a pint of a local brewery's best bitter -- and it fact the "best" was very good, in fact -- yum! In fact the whole meal turned out to be very good indeed, but I admit to being more than a bit amused by the side order that came automatically with that and just about every main dish, including lasagna: chips! 

My meal at Alfie's

A shepherd's pie consists of ground meat, in this case lamb, in gravy with a few carrots and LOTS of mashed potatoes. Adding a side of chips to this seemed to me to over-potato the meal just the least wee little bit. In the U.S. we have more than our fair share of weight problems, but the Brits are catching up -- and if they continue to serve food in this manner they may just surpass us. I had the choice of a second side as well, but rather than mashed peas, another favorite side dish here, more healthy than the combo of mashed potatoes and chips, but of a consistency that I can't quite get my fork or spoon around, I chose a salad. The young woman who took my order looked at me as if I was quite a peculiar fellow when I asked for the salad -- perhaps she'd have preferred me to add an order of hash-browns?


So! the town of Winchester, quite nice, but nothing all that special for the tourist, though it would be very nice to live there. The cathedral WAS worth the trip, but I found one added pleasure, the tiny but beautiful River Itchen, which for me really made the journey worth while.

The River Itchen

Located just outside the Roman, later medieval walls of the city, where once upon a time it served as a moat, the River Itchen is a very narrow, very clear stream of water, along which the good citizens of Winchester have placed a wide and pleasant walking path, and I found myself itchin' (roll of snare drum) to have a walk down its bank.

The river and the path alongside it

I had read that the brilliant doomed young Romantic poet, John Keats, composed his last great poem, "To Autumn" after a walk along the banks of this river, and while Keats took his walk on a mid-September day, whereas I strolled through on a day in very late autumn, I could almost instantly sense the river's inspiration for him. The poem begins:


"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun..."


Lovely, but I was more taken with the first lines of the third and last stanza:


"Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too..."


Keats died only a few years after this, in his mid-20s. I, who have lived a long and often happy life, though with no accomplishments to my name that even approach this single poem of a twenty year old youth, at times find myself feeling autumnal, on occasion in a somewhat depressing way, but more frequently in a merely wistful, perhaps slightly "triste" manner. Where ARE the songs of spring? Well, I see them around me daily in the faces, attitudes and aspirations of my students. So I remain very aware of the songs of spring. My music is necessarily of a different kind, but no less lovely, I think. Ah...yes.


And there you have that promised second reference to a work of art. I hope it was worth the wait, and I hope you can guess which I consider sublime, which ridiculous.

The medieval city walls near Wolvesey Castle

AlI should end on that note, but I seldom know when to stop, so I'm going to throw caution to the winds and tell you that Winchester holds one other rather odd but not uninteresting spot to visit. Two ruined castles can be visited in Winchester. 

All I could see of Wolvesey Castle

One, Wolvesey, built in the twelfth century and home to many bishops of Winchester, was more a palace than castle, and alas could not be visited on my trip, as it is closed for winter, 


The other is Winchester Castle, and almost nothing remains of it but its Great Hall, which I saw on the way out of the old city as I headed back to the train station. It's easy to find as it sits next to Westgate, one of the medieval entrances to the city and still standing strong, if a bit incongruous at a busy modern street crossing. 

The Great Hall, on the left, and remains of
Winchester Castle

The Great Hall houses a great round table, which has long been dubbed King Arthur's Round Table, and which has been here for approximately 600 years.

Of course it's not Arthur's Round Table, as the man behind the legend lived before this castle was built. The table is displayed on the wall of the hall, and one book I read while looking up information for this post noted that it looked like a giant wheel of fortune. Forgive me if to me it looks more like a dart board for giants. Whatever it looks like, as you might imagine in the shop adjacent there are all sorts of variations on it for sale: the coaster, the serving tray, the mouse pad. Why not, after all? I nearly bought a souvenir there myself, but the price tags kept me sane.


After that I easily found Winchester's small but tidy rail station 

and almost immediately caught a train back to london, tuning out my noisy Friday afternoon fellow travelers with Bach's Orchstral Suites -- and that, in a rather substantial nutshell, is the story of my day in Winchester!