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It may be cold and bleak, however there hasn't been much rain and non today. Lee hasn't seen much of Hampshire on previous visits, so we decided to how her one of our favoiurite villages and one of her favourite cathedrals.
First stop was Crawley. I guess its not really a village because there are no shops, just a pub, and it only reopened last year ... 2023.
If you love thatch, this is a village for you as there are a dozen or more lining the main street. I dont think there are any side streets.
Just to remind you, this is a blog posted by a ferret:
Lee had observed the thatch staue of a bird on the roof of one house. When I later told her about thatch birds on many cottages and said there was a pheasant on one at the top of the hill, she said she has seen it and thought it was some other bird. Both wrong
Crawley has a historically low crime rate due to its small size. One notable event in the village is the shooting of a heron within Crawley. Today, a thatched statue of the heron sits on top of the house where it was killed. As this was such a small event to the world, this is not found on news sites, but the people of Crawley haven't forgotten this event.
Probably only around ten vehicles would have passed the hotel all day. A bus, two trucks and we pedestrians spent 10 minutes untangling a traffic jam.
We waited for it to clear before heading for Winchester just 10 minutes away.
I'll keep this short and sweet. I set the satnav for Winchester Cathederal. It took us down narrow back streets that few tourists would ever see and ended in the private car park behind the cathedral and amid the wonderful medieval buildings.
I dropped Ches and Lee off and went in search of the Brooks St Carpark which I had used on previous visits to Winchester. It was still there.
On the way walking to the cathedral, I passed Rick Stein's restaurant. L17.50 for three course winter lunch.
Met up with Ches who wasnt interested in the interior of the cathedral. I joined Lee inside. Wonderfull. I thought it was up there with Ely Cathedral. A guide agreed and added Durham Cathedral, making it a triumvirate.
A hearty lunch at Ricks included a Duck Cottage Pie.
The rest of the gloomy afternoon involved a walk around the cathedral via the Mill Stree path and into the medieval quarter. As you walk through the gateway, if you take a left turn instead of right turn, a doorway leads to a narrow flight of stairs up to Saint Swithun-upon-Kingsgate. Yup, a church built on top of the city walls above the gateway.
As usual, I've pinched some backround info:
This very small church occupies a most unusual location atop the arch of Kingsgate, just a few yards from the Cathedral Close. Yet, for all its minuscule size, St Swithun's is quite as affecting as its grand neighbour, Winchester Cathedral.
It is believed that St Swithun's was a chapel for lay workers at the Abbey in medieval times. The interior is very plain, with whitewashed walls and an unadorned wooden ceiling. Sit for a moment in the simple wooden pews and it is hard not to feel a sense of peace despite the noise of traffic passing only a few yards away.
We do not know when the church was built; the first written record comes from 1264 when it was badly damaged by fire. That bald statement does not tell the real story; what happened was that the Prior of Winchester Abbey was locked in a dispute with the townsfolk. The citizens of Winchester burned down the church in anger.
The first record of the gate itself is from 1148, so it is certainly possible that the church was built into the gate at that early date. It was quite common for small churches or chapels to be built into the gates of medieval cities, where they might be used by travellers to give thanks for a journey safely completed or to pray for a safe trip elsewhere.
Only a very few of these 'gateway churches' remain, making St Swithun's a rare survivor. When the monastery at Winchester was dissolved in the Reformation and the shrine of St Swithun at the cathedral destroyed, the tiny church over the gate was put to use as a parish church.
The church is mentioned in Anthony Trollope's novel, The Warden, where Trollope calls it St Cuthbert's.
Interior of St Swithun upon Kingsgate
Does a church above a gate seem a good place to keep pigs? Robert Allen thought so. Allen served as a porter at Kingsgate sometime before 1660; he and his wife not only lived in the church but kept their pigs at one end.
You reach St Swithun's by climbing a narrow stair built into one side of the gateway arch. The staircase frame is timber, dating to about 1500. The east window contains fragments of 14th and 15th-century glass brought here from St Peter's Church in Chesil. Also brought here from elsewhere is the 17th-century altar rail, which comes from a nearby school. Most of the other furnishings are late Victorian.
There is a small brass memorial plaque on the wall to four young children of John Bond (d. 1612) who all died before the age of 4. There is a much more elaborate memorial to a local apothecary named William Widmore (d. 1756) who is described as 'a friend without guile. An Apothecary without Ostentation.' An empty niche in the east wall probably held a statue of St Swithun, which would have been removed at the Reformation.
The church is normally open daylight hours. I can attest to this fact, as I wasn't even aware of its existence on my first visit to Winchester, and practically stumbled into it!
We'll return to Winchester on Thursday week to see a bit more of the cathedral, and maybe Hospital of St Cross. It was closed when we arrived around 4.30. We were able to walk around the lawns within the complex however the church was closed.
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