Winchester, Painted by Wilfrid Ball

Me lyketh ever, the lengerè the bet, By Wyngester, that Joly citè. The ton is god and wel y-set, The folk is comely on to see; The aier is god both inne and oute, The citè stent...

Antiquity and long-continued vitality such as have fallen to Winchester--for to go back to its early humble beginnings takes us back very far indeed--lead us naturally to look f...

The part played by physical causes, outlined above, is illustrated by the successive stages in the Roman occupation. The two first invasions by Julius Caesar were little more th...

The Roman occupation lasted some 400 years, after which Winchester history becomes a blank, and it is not the settlement and conquest of the next occupiers, the Gewissas or West...

With the dawn of the ninth century came further development. During the 200 years or so of the so-called Heptarchy, a gradual and continuous movement of cohesion--social as well...

A prince that draws By example more than others do by laws. That is so just, to his great act and thought To do, not what kings may, but what kings ought. BEN JONSON, _The Hue a...

When Alfred died in 901 he had accomplished a great work; a work great and lasting, as the next sixty years were to show, and during these years the ascendancy of Wessex and of...

With the death of Edwy in 959 a new chapter of interest opens, a period of revival, of growth, of development, the golden age of Saxon Winchester, during which the Saxon city wa...

Æthelwold’s work was still in full progress when King Edgar died in 975. Young as he was--he was only some thirty-two years old when he died--he had reigned for some sixteen yea...

It is safe to say that no other event so thoroughly affected the fortunes of Winchester as the Norman Conquest. Not only was the city completely transformed in outward form, but...

When William the Conqueror died, the link with Normandy was temporarily severed, and during the reign of Rufus of evil memory Winchester declined in political importance; nor, a...

Great as has been the part played by kings in the history of our city, that played by bishops has been even greater still, and few among the makers of Winchester hold a more pro...

Ay, that approves thee, tyrant, what thou art, No father, king, or shepherd of thy realm; But one that tears her entrails with thy hands, And like a thirsty tiger suck’st her bl...

What do you lack, what do you buy, mistress? a fine hobby horse to make your son a tilter? a drum to make him a soldier? a fiddle to make him a reveller? what is’t you lack?

But active as were the currents that circulated in and round the gilds, the wool markets, the annual fair, and the pilgrimage resorts, the dominating stream was that which flowe...

To deal adequately with Winchester Cathedral would be almost to write the history of England, a task manifestly impossible within the limits of such a work as this. For the Cath...

“Manners makyth man”--‘manners’ in the old and wide sense of the word, the equivalent of the Latin ‘mores,’ or of the word ‘conversation’ in St. Paul’s epistles, _i.e._ moral wo...

From College one turns naturally to Wolvesey--Wolvesey with its wonderful grey stone walls, its memories of Saxon and Norman, Plantagenet and Stuart times. Here Alfred kept his...

his dwelling at Wolvesey with an ‘adulterine’ castle--for he built here without royal warrant, as he built his castles elsewhere at Bishop’s Waltham and at Hursley,--and he side...

It is always a pleasing occupation to follow out the associations of human fancy which often invest persons and places with an interest, and indeed a romantic charm, to which th...