Winchester Cathedral

Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA · EN · 04/10/2026

Winchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity and of Saint Peter and Saint Paul and of Saint Swithun in Winchester, is the cathedral of the city of Winchester, England, and is among the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. The cathedral is the seat of the bishop of Winchester and is the mother church for the ancient Diocese of Winchester. It is run by a dean and chapter, under the dean of Winchester.

The cathedral as it stands today was built from 1079 to 1532 and is dedicated to numerous saints, most notably Swithun. It has a very long and very wide nave in the Perpendicular Gothic style, an Early English retroquire, and Norman transepts and tower. With an overall length of 558 ft, it is the longest medieval cathedral in the world. With an area of 53480 ft2, it is also the sixth-largest cathedral by area in the UK, surpassed only by Liverpool, St Paul's, York, Westminster (RC) and Lincoln.

A major tourist attraction, the cathedral attracted 365,000 visitors in 2019, an increase of 12,000 from 2018.

History

Earlier buildings

Though churches were recorded in Winchester as early as 164, the first Christian church can be traced back to c. 648, when King Cenwalh of Wessex built a small, cross-shaped building just north of the present building. This building, known as the Old Minster, became the cathedral for the new Diocese of Winchester in 662, a vast area stretching from the English Channel to the River Thames, the bishopric having been transferred from Dorchester on Thames, Oxfordshire by Bishop Wine. The design of this early church cannot be confirmed, for no trace other than ground plan exists today, but Wolstan mentions a gateway tower situated some distance from the west end. Wine died in c. 672, but one of his later successors, Swithun, would become one of the most famous Bishops of Winchester.

Whether Swithun himself oversaw any expansion of the Old Minster is unknown, but it is recorded in Acta Sanctorum that from 963 to 984, Bishop Æthelwold greatly expanded the church, the works being finished by the following Bishop, Alphege. The church was rededicated in 993, and consisted of a central tower, north and south aisles, transepts, crypt and an apse, and was briefly the largest church in Europe. Also on the site was the New Minster, in direct competition with the neighbouring Old Minster. The New Minster was begun by Alfred the Great but completed in 901 by his son Edward the Elder. These two monasteries existed side by side, the monks becoming virtually intertwined with one another. Swithun's body, which according to his wishes had been buried in the graveyard outside the church, was brought inside and housed in a magnificent shrine.

Norman cathedral

When William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, he began to install his own bishops in place of the Anglo-Saxon bishops. William installed his friend and relative Walkelin as the first Norman bishop of Winchester in 1070, and nine years later, in 1079, Walkelin began the construction of a huge new Norman cathedral, on a site just to the south of the Old and New Minsters, the site of the present building. The new cathedral was consecrated with the completion of the east end in 1093, and the many tombs of Saxon kings moved from the Old Minster into the new cathedral. The following day, demolition of the New and Old Minsters began, and quickly progressed, leaving virtually no remains. The outline of the Old Minster can still be seen today to the north of the present nave.

Work quickly progressed to the transepts and central tower, and these were certainly complete by 1100 when William Rufus was buried underneath the crossing tower. Work to the nave was probably interrupted in 1107 when the central tower fell, but was restarted following reconstruction of the tower, and completed before the death of William Giffard, who was bishop of Winchester from 1100 to his death in 1129. The standard of much of this building work was high, and thus much of it survives in the present building, most notably in the transepts which have an appearance almost as Walkelin left them. This building was monumental in size, more than 500 ft in length, and it still makes up the core of the present building.

Gothic expansions

The first alteration to Walkelin's cathedral was in 1202 when Bishop Godfrey de Luci started construction of a new Early English retroquire. Luci died in 1204, but the work continued under successive bishops, eventually resulting in the demolition of the Norman apse.

The next expansions and rebuilding took place the mid 14th century, when in 1346, Bishop Edington demolished the Norman west front and began building a new Perpendicular Gothic facade, featuring a huge west window, which still stands today. Edington also began renovation of the nave, but this was mostly carried out by his successors, most notably William of Wykeham and his master mason, William Wynford, who remodelled the massive Norman nave into a soaring Perpendicular Gothic masterpiece. This they achieved by encasing the Norman stone in new ashlar, recutting the piers with Gothic mouldings and pointed arches, and reorganising the three-tier nave into two tiers, by extending the arcade upwards into what was the triforium and extending the clerestory downwards to meet it. The wooden ceiling was replaced with a decorative stone vault. Following Wykeham's death in 1404, this remodelling work continued under successive bishops, and was completed c. 1420.

Wykeham's successor, Henry Beaufort (1405–1447) carried out fewer alterations, adding a chantry on the south side of the retroquire, although work on the nave continued. From 1450 to 1528, under the leadership of Bishops William Waynflete, Peter Courtenay, Thomas Langton and Richard Foxe, major rebuilding and expansion was carried out on the Norman choir and Early English retroquire. This work included the building of further chantry chapels in the retroquire, the replacement of the Norman east end with a Perpendicular Gothic presbytery, and the extension of Luci's retroquire into a Lady Chapel. Unlike the rebuilding of the nave some 100 years earlier, the Gothic presbytery was vaulted in wood and painted to look like stone, as at York Minster. After its progressive extensions, the east end is now about 110 ft beyond that of Walkelin's building.

Dissolution of the Monasteries

King Henry VIII seized control of the Catholic Church in England and declared himself head of the new Church of England. The Benedictine foundation, the Priory of Saint Swithun, was dissolved. The priory surrendered to the king in 1539. Richard Pollard and Thomas Wriothesley came to dismantle the shrines and altar; the shrine of St Swithun was destroyed. The next year a new chapter was formed, and the last prior, William Basyng, was appointed dean. Mary I married Philip of Spain here in 1554. The monastic buildings, including the cloister and chapter house, were later demolished, mostly during the 1560–1580 tenure of the reformist bishop Robert Horne.

17th–19th centuries

The 17th century saw important changes to the interior, including the erection of a choir screen by Inigo Jones in 1638–1639, the insertion of a wooden fan vault underneath the crossing tower (previously the tower was open to the church) and the destruction of much medieval glass and imagery by Parliamentarian soldiers in December 1642, including the near-complete destruction of the massive Great West Window by Cromwell and his forces. The window was put back together by the townspeople as a mosaic following the Restoration of the Monarchy, but it has never regained its original appearance as the damage was too great.

In the 18th century, many visitors commented on the neglect of the cathedral and the town; Daniel Defoe described the latter in about 1724 as "a place of no trade ... no manufacture, no navigation".

Major restoration followed in the early 19th century under the direction of architect William Garbett and then John Nash. Jane Austen was buried in the north nave aisle in 1817, and many visitors continue to come today to see her final resting place.

20th century restoration

At the turn of the 20th century, Winchester Cathedral was in grave danger of collapse, and by the summer of 1905, the Dean, William Furneaux, was facing the imminent ruin of the building. Huge cracks had appeared in the walls, some of them large enough for a small child to crawl into, the walls were bulging and leaning, and stone fell from the walls. Furneaux brought in a leading architect of the age, Thomas G. Jackson. Jackson's prognosis was grim, and his survey showed the entire building was listing to the south-east, and sinking into the soft ground, most likely due to defects in the foundations. On his instructions, large sections of the building were shored up with timber. Initial estimates for the cost of the repair were £20,000 in 1905.

Jackson, acknowledging he was out of his depth, brought in engineer Francis Fox, whose company had completed projects such as the Mersey Tunnel. Jackson and Fox sunk a trench to the foundations of the east end and discovered the Normans had constructed the entire cathedral on a 'floating raft', consisting of a 15-inch-thick layer of beech trees, laid diagonally one on top of the other. Some of these beech trees were solid, but others had rotted and collapsed, and as they did so, the cathedral shifted and sank into the soft ground, which was not strong enough to support the enormous weight of the building, causing the cracks, bulges and leaning walls. Fox removed a layer of topsoil, and ten feet of clay, at which point they arrived at the raft. Below this was a solid layer of peat, about 8 ft thick, and below this at a depth of 16 to 24 ft below the cathedral floor, they encountered a more solid layer of gravel, which they intended to utilise as the new base for the foundations.

Jackson and Fox proposed to sink a series of trenches around the eastern end, about 50 in number, down to the gravel bed, and to build up to the raft with concrete and brick. However, the upper walls were so weak that digging under the foundations without supporting the walls could bring the structure down. Therefore, Fox began grouting the walls using the 'Greathead Grouting Machine' to fill in the cracks. When grouting was completed, a new problem was encountered. When the peat was dug through to reach the gravel bed, water rushed up to a height of fourteen feet. The peat had acted as a seal, and when it was broken, water from the nearby River Itchen flooded the trenches. Jackson ordered a powerful steam pump to remove the water from the trenches. This caused a rift between Fox and Jackson, as Fox thought the pumping could further destabilise the foundations and cause the collapse of the building. Pumping nevertheless began.

In the spring of 1906, there were signs Fox was right – the cathedral was still moving and sinking, and this time, more rapidly than before. It was realised for the first time that there was a serious risk to lives. Fox made a site visit in March 1906 and became concerned because the water being pumped out was no longer clear but was cloudy, containing chalk. He ordered pumping stopped. The pump had disturbed a layer of chalk silt between the peat and gravel bed, which further destabilised the building. Jackson was against stopping pumping, as he could not see an alternative. Fox, however, summoned diver William Walker from London, who arrived in Winchester on 5 April 1906.

Walker, who was arguably the most experienced diver in the country at the time, had an extremely challenging job. His task was to descend into the flooded trenches in a primitive and immensely heavy diving suit and level the trenches, by removing the peat topsoil and then laying bags of cement to plug the water coming up from below. Walker's suit weighed 200 lb dry, and the trenches were cramped and pitch-black; Walker had to feel around with his hands. Additional challenges were that the water was full of bodies and graves, which made the water septic. Walker worked 6 to 7 hour shifts almost every day for six years to achieve this, diving under the majority of the cathedral building. When he had completed his work in 1911, the pump could be used safely to remove the water without disturbing the foundations. In 1911, flying buttresses were added along the length of the south nave to complete the work.

A special service was held on St Swithun's Day in 1912, attended by the King and Queen, to give thanks for the work of Jackson, Fox and Walker. Walker was later rewarded with the MVO and is credited with saving the cathedral from collapse. The total cost of the work was £113,000, equivalent in 2017 to nearly £9 million. Walker laid more than 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks, and 900,000 bricks.

21st century

In February 2000, a three-year project was completed to clean and conserve the nave and west front, which were last cleaned in 1897. For those three years, the nave had been covered with scaffolding both internally and externally. Following the removal of the scaffolding in early 2000, it was the first time the cathedral interior had been free of scaffolding since 1990.

During August 2006, a near-catastrophic fire was narrowly averted, when a flying Chinese lantern got caught on the roof and began setting fire to it. No lasting damage took place and the fire was quickly extinguished. A spokesman for Hampshire Fire & Rescue said that had it not been spotted, the fire could have been similar in scale to the 1984 fire at York Minster, which almost completely destroyed the south transept.

Source and attribution

Adapted from “Winchester Cathedral” by English Wikipedia contributors. Main paragraphs and sections are retained; tables, reference markers and technical markup are omitted. This is an encyclopedic adaptation, not a personal review. Original revision and contributor history ↗. Text is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗. Check current visitor access, tickets and transport with the relevant operator.