“which extends under the whole of the choir and is one of the best specimens of its class to be found in England. The west and east parts are evidently of a much earlier date than the central, which is Early English, and of the same period as the choir above. In building this, the ancient crypt was probably broken through, and in part reconstructed. The earlier portions are distinguished by very massive piers and circular arches. Between the piers are small pillars, with plain broad capitals. It is not impossible that this part of the crypt may date from before the Conquest. At all events, it is the earliest portion of the existing cathedral, and cannot be later than the work of Bishop Gundulf.”—(R. J. K.)
WINCHESTER
Dedication: The Holy and Indivisible Trinity. Formerly the Church of a Benedictine Monastery.
Special features: Norman Nave; Tower; West Window; Choir-stalls; Font; Reredos.
Winchester is the largest cathedral in England and affords good examples of every style from pure Norman to early Renaissance. It is the fifth cathedral that has occupied this site, for tradition says that a British church was founded here by Lucius, King of the Britons.
This first church was destroyed in 266 and the clergy martyred during the persecutions of the Christians by Diocletian. The second church, erected under Constantine, was in 515 transformed by Cerdic, founder of the Kingdom of Wessex, into a Temple of Dagon, in which he was crowned in 519 and buried in 534. Cerdic’s great grandson, Kynegils, converted by St. Birinus, the first of Saxon bishops, began the third church which his son, Kenwalk, completed in 648. Kenwalk’s buildings were, in their turn, enlarged and repaired by Swithun, a prior of the Benedictine monastery established here. Swithun, who became Bishop of Winchester and tutor to King Alfred and Ethelwold, was, according to the chroniclers, “a diligent builder of churches in places where there were none before, and a repairer of those that had been destroyed or ruined.” When he died in 862, he was buried, according to his own desire, in the churchyard of Winchester, where “passersby might tread on his grave, and where the rain from the eaves might fall on it.”
When this third church was destroyed by the Danes in 867, portions were restored by Alfred the Great, St. Ethelwold and St. Alphege. St. Ethelwold removed the body of St. Swithun to the golden shrine within the cathedral, now dedicated to St. Swithun, St. Peter and St. Paul; but the Translation being delayed by rain, gave the saint reputation as a weather prophet. Hence the weather on the anniversary (July 15) is foretold by the old rhyme:
“St. Swithun’s Day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain;
St. Swithun’s Day, if thou be fair,
Forty days ’twill rain na mair.”
One of the features of St. Ethelwold’s cathedral was a magnificent “pair of organs,” of tremendous size and power, with twelve bellows above and fourteen below and seventy strong men as blowers to fill the four hundred pipes. Below, at two keyboards, sat two brethren in “unity of spirit.”