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Description: | At 556 feet, this is the longest Gothic church in Europe. The Cathedral seen today is of Norman (11th century) origins, though there have been some modifications over the centuries, especially to the windows and doors. Winchester Cathedral was built near the site of St Swithun's priory, a 7th century Benedictine monastery. It was built of limestone shipped from quarries on the Isle of Wight. The footings were laid on a raft of timber, because the ground was very wet, and flooding has plagued the Cathedral since.
It had a fairly simple plan of aisled nave, a square crossing with the choir below a crossing tower, aisled transepts north and south, aisled presbytery with an apsidal ambulatory and at the easternmost extremity an eastern chapel with a rounded, or apsidal, east end. At the western end of the church there were probably a pair of towers flanking the main entrance. The central tower fell down in 1107 and had to be rebuilt.
Beneath the eastern end of the church is a crypt, which is liable to flood in winter. Its design indicates the original shape of the eastern end of the Norman church.
Standing at the western end of the cathedral it is easy to forget the Norman origins in the splendour of one of the finest Gothic interiors in the world. Alterations and rebuilding took place in the 14th century, the cloister and most of the monastic buildings had been pulled down in about 1570 and the interior was plundered by Henry VIII's commissioners. During the Civil War religious zealots vandalised most of the shrines and broke most of the stained glass. Most of the modern glass is Victorian.
It has needed constant restoration and repair with the most dramatic restoration at the beginning of the 20th century when the timber raft on which the Normans had built the church was underpinned with concrete to stop the danger of the whole cathedral collapsing.. A diver called William Walker spent several years working on the waterlogged timbers to enable Sir Thomas Jackson to supervise the work of underpinning.
Reference:
Morriss, R.K. (1994) The Buildings of Winchester. p.56 - 65
Winchester Local Studies Library in Jewry Street holds many books on the Cathedral for further information. | Format: | image/jpeg | License: | http://www.sopse.org.uk/ixbin/hixclient.exe?a=query&p=gateway&f=generic_sitetext%2ehtm&_IXFIRST_=1&_IXMAXHITS_=1&cms_con_core_subtype%3acms_con_text_what=copyright&%3acms_sys_group=%22sopse%22 | Rights holder: | Hampshire Library and Information Service - Hampshire County Council | Subjects: | building Winchester Cathedral church | Temporal: | start=1950-01-01; end=1970-12-31; | Source: | Sense of place SE | Creator: | Derek Dine, Hampshire County Library | Identifier: | http://www.sopse.org.uk/ixbin/hixclient.... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | image/jpeg | Go to resource |
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