A visit to Winchester.

John and I had planned a visit to Winchester earlier in July but had to cancel it. I can't remember why we cancelled but on Monday we decided it was a perfect day for our trip. Winchester is a cathedral city in Hampshire in the south of England. It sits on the western end of the South Downs National Park and is only 60 miles southwest of London, making it a perfect venue for a day out. Winchester developed from a Roman town but there was an iron age settlement on the site before the romans came to the area. The area around Winchester has three iron age forts and as well as visiting the cathedral we also wanted to walk to the top of St Catherine's Hill. At the summit of the hill there are earthworks of the Iron Age fort, buried ruins of the Norman chapel that gives the site its name, and also a copse of beech trees. St Catherine's Hill is also a nature reserve.

The day was perfect for visiting, a good temperature but not too hot. We planned to visit the Cathedral in the morning and then do the walk after lunch. The best laid plans can be derailed. There have been road works on the A3 at it's junction with the M3 for some time whilst they widen the intersection to improve traffic flow. The road works didn't delay us but the 'incident' did. We were held up for quite some time and so we arrived in Winchester around lunch time. We had already planned our parking so headed straight there. I took a photo of the Cathedral from the car park. As you can see it doesn't have a spire and from this angel looks quite small.

In reality Winchester Cathedral is the 6th largest cathedral in the UK and is among the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. The cathedral was built from 1079 to 1532 and is dedicated to several saints with St Swithun of Winchester being one of them. Here is a photo from the front.

The cathedral has a very long and wide nave and is built in the perpendicular gothic style. The overall length of the cathedral is 558 feet (170 m), which makes it the longest medieval cathedral in the world.  When I took the photo I wasn't at the end of the nave, so it gives you some idea of the size of the space.

As always I'm on the lookout for textiles. I liked the textile art in the nave. It added a lot of colour to the area. This altar front was beautiful.

as is this one that I found in one of the side chapels.

In the epiphany chapel there was this beautiful altar front. The cathedral has its own embroidery team and this was designed for the cathedral and stitched by their own staff.

As we came out of the chapel the facilities team was just returning an altar front to the storage box. What I could see of it was beautiful but I couldn't get much of a photo. I had a very interesting chat with the two men doing the job and they spoke with great respect about the embroidery and the team involved.

I found two banners, one for the Mother's union,

and one for the cathedral.

In the choir stalls I spotted these needlepoint cushions. 

Behind the high Altar there is this amazing screen.

The floor tiles are also very beautiful. It gave me lots of ideas for quilts and quilt blocks

It wasn't just the floor tiles that were decorated, the ceilings were very interesting as well.

The cathedral has an exhibition called Kings and Scribes. This YouTube video gives you an introduction to the exhibition

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One part of the exhibition looked at how the Winchester bible was written. It is believed that only one person scribed the bible, since all the lettering is in the same style and size. You are not allowed to take photo of the bible, even without flash, in order to protect it.

These are the items the scribe would have used and below is some information about each item.

The bible is beautifully illustrated and the information below tells you about the colours used and where they came from.

As we headed back to the main doors of the cathedral we passed an art project completed by children who would be leaving year 6 at Church of England primary schools in the diocese of Winchester

This was a very interesting and imaginative project. The children certainly demonstrated their artistic and creative talents.

Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral. She died in Winchester in 1817 and was buried in the north aisle of the cathedral's nave. Her grave is marked by a memorial stone, and visitors can leave flowers and letters near the plaque. If you like Jane Austen's writing you can't walk past without stopping to read the inscription.

By this time both John and I needed a rest and we were also hungry since we hadn't eaten since breakfast and it was now 3 p.m. We decided to eat at the cathedral cafe and the food was very tasty and well presented. We wanted to take a walk to St Catherine's Hill after lunch but we knew our parking was only paid for until 4:30 so we changed out itinerary and decided to visit the ruins of Wolvesey castle. I'll tell you about that in my next post. Today is Saturday and I have a date with my sewing machine!

Take care

Lyndsey