The route which they took on leaving Winchester is uncertain. It is not till we approach Alton that we find the first traces of the Pilgrims’ Way, but in all probability they followed the Roman road which still leads to Silchester and London along the valley of the river Itchen. Immediately outside the city gates they would find themselves before another stately pile of conventual buildings, the great Abbey of Hyde. This famous Benedictine house, founded by Alfred, and long known as the New Minster, was first removed from its original site near the Cathedral in the twelfth century. Finding their house damp and unhealthy, and feeling themselves cramped in the narrow space close to the rival monastery{29} of St. Swithun, the monks obtained a charter from Henry I. giving them leave to settle outside the North gate. In the year 1110, they moved to their new home, bearing with them the wonder-working shrine of St. Josse, the great silver cross given to the New Minster by Cnut, and a yet more precious relic, the bones of Alfred the Great. Here in the green meadows on the banks of the Itchen they reared the walls of their new convent and the magnificent church which, after being in the next reign burnt to the ground by fire-balls from Henry of Blois’ Castle at Wolvesey, rose again from the flames fairer and richer than before. Here it stood till the Dissolution, when Thomas Wriothesley, Cromwell’s Commissioner, stripped the shrine of its treasures, carried off the gold and jewels, and pulled down the abbey walls to use the stone in the building of his own great house at Stratton. “We intend,” he wrote to his master, after describing the riches of gold and silver plate, the crosses studded with pearls, chalices, and emeralds on which he had lain sacrilegious hands, “both at Hyde and St. Mary to sweep away all the rotten{30} bones that be called relics; which we may not omit, lest it be thought we came more for the treasure than for the avoiding of the abomination of idolatry.” Considerable fragments of the building still remained. In Milner’s time the ruins covered the whole meadow, but towards the end of the last century the city authorities fixed on the spot as the site of a new bridewell, and all that was left of the once famous Abbey was then destroyed. The tombs of the dead were rifled. At every stroke of the spade some ancient sepulchre was violated, stone coffins containing chalices, croziers, rings, were broken open and bones scattered abroad. Then the ashes of the noblest of our kings were blown to the winds, and the resting-place of Ælfred remains to this day unknown. A stone marked with the words, Ælfred Rex, DCCCLXXXI., was carried off by a passing stranger, and is now to be seen at Corby Castle, in Cumberland. To-day an old gateway near the church of St. Bartholomew and some fragments of the monastery wall are the only remains of Alfred’s new Minster.
From this spot an ancient causeway, now{31} commonly known as the Nuns’ Walk, but which in the last century bore the more correct title of the Monks’ Walk, leads alongside of a stream which supplied Hyde Abbey with water, for a mile and a half up the valley to Headbourne[7] Worthy. The path is cool and shady, planted with a double row of tall elms, and as we look back we have beautiful views of the venerable city and the great Cathedral sleeping in the quiet hollow, dreaming of all its mighty past. Above, scarred with the marks of a deep railway cutting, and built over with new houses, is St. Giles’ Hill, where during many centuries the famous fair was held each September. Foreign pilgrims would gaze with interest on the scene of that yearly event, which had attained a world-wide fame, and attracted merchants from all parts of France, Flanders, and Italy. The green hill-side from which we look down on the streets and towers of Winchester presented a lively spectacle during that fortnight. The stalls were arranged in long rows and called after the nationality of the vendors of the goods they sold. There was the{32} Street of Caen, of Limoges, of the Flemings, of the Genoese, the Drapery, the Goldsmiths’ Stall, the Spicery, held by the monks of St. Swithun, who drove a brisk trade in furs and groceries on these occasions. All shops in the city and for seven leagues round were closed during the fair, and local trade was entirely suspended. The mayor handed over the keys of the city for the time being to the bishop, who had large profits from the tolls and had stalls at the fair himself, while smaller portions went to the abbeys, and thirty marks a year were paid to St. Swithun’s for the repair of the great church. The Red King first granted his kinsman, Bishop Walkelin, the tolls of this three days’ fair at St. Giles’ feast, which privilege was afterwards extended to a period of sixteen days by Henry III. The great fair lasted until modern times, but in due course was removed from St. Giles’ Hill into the city itself. “As the city grew stronger and the fair weaker,” writes Dean Kitchin, “it slid down St. Giles’ Hill and entered the town, where its noisy ghost still holds revel once a year.”
Leaving these historic memories behind us we{33} follow the Monks’ Walk until we reach Headbourne Worthy, the first of a group of villages granted by Egbert, in 825, to St. Swithun’s Priory, and bearing this quaint name, derived from the Saxon woerth—a homestead. The church here dates from Saxon times, and claims to have been founded by St. Wilfred. The rude west doorway and chancel arch are said to belong to Edward the Confessor’s time. Over the west archway, which now leads into a fifteenth-century chapel, is a fine sculptured bas-relief larger than life, representing the Crucifixion and the Maries, which probably originally adorned the exterior of the church. But the most interesting thing in the church is the brass to John Kent, a Winchester scholar, who died in 1434. The boy wears his college gown and his hair is closely cut, while a scroll comes out of his lips bearing the words: “Misericordiam Dni inetum cantabo.” Next we reach Kingsworthy, so called because it was once Crown property, a pretty little village with low square ivy-grown church-tower and lych-gate, and a charming old-fashioned inn standing a little back from the road.{34}