Winchester Cathedral

We visited Winchester Cathedral today - after taking Lilly to the specialists for her arm.

Winchester holds the honour of being one of the largest Cathedrals in Europe - with the longest Nave in total. Although there has been a church of some kind here since the 600s, it wasn't till 1070 that a cathedral was established and built here.

It was extremely marshy in this area, so it was decided to build the foundations on rafts ( yep.. thats sensible.) which to be fair lasted 800 years... till the early 1900s when some of the outer walls began to lean outwards and form huge cracks.

After ditches were dug around to look at the foundations, it was discovered that the layers of peat which it had been laid on, had compressed due to the drought that they had been experiencing.   Unfortunately  the ditches filled with dark murky water immediately, so any work which could be done, had to be done underwater in pitch black... so bring in the deep sea diver..

Its amazing that this bloke single handedly worked for 6 years pulling out the peat from under the foundations and replaced it with bags of cement and bricks.

And that is only one story about this incredible Cathedral!  It serves as a place for pilgrims to come, for religious reasons.. and those to pay respects to Jane Austin - who is buried here as well.

Gorgeous Nave huh?

This is one of the side chapels - which is still used every week for morning prayer. Its a magnificent example of medieval artwork. One of the funny things about it is to realise that bodgy work happened even back then.  If you notice on the left hand side there is plaster covering some of the painting. This was done about 700 years ago, when they had built the chapel and painted it; then decided they wanted to put the arches in, so had to bodgy up the top and plaster over the painting.  far out.

One of the cool stories from here is about this window. It looks very modern as there doesn't seem to be any patterns or pictures. It is in fact medieval. The story goes that when Cromwells men galloped their horses into the cathedral, they threw the bones of all the ancient Saxon kings onto the ground and used them to smash all the windows.

After they had left, the monks collected and gathered all the pieces they could and hid them for years, until the government sorted themselves out and they reinstated a king.

With the tiny pieces, they formed these two magnificent windows.  If you look closely, you can see tiny faces of angels and saints. Its quite weird once you see it.

Jane Austen is buried here - a huge honour for both her as a woman and as her profession - though of course, they didn't mention her books that she was an author - far too shocking for a pastors daughter. The Jane Austen Society puts large bunches of flowers there every week.

These last two photos are really interesting. This is situated at the back of the church. Above this hole are paintings of saints. Originally there were alcoves with statues - but these were smashed by the puritans. behind this screen, were bones and sacred objects held by these saints.  Pilgrims would arrive, crawl through the church on hands and knees and crawl through this hole to then stand up and view the items. The dark marks around the door show the thousands of hands which brushed past it over the centuries. Cool huh?