Winchester Cathedral

Winchester Cathedral, cathedral church in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It is the seat of the Anglican bishop of Winchester as well as a major tourist attraction. The present cathedral was built between 1079 and 1420.

Long before London gained its predominance, Winchester was the most important city in England. It was the capital of the kingdom of Wessex and became a center of learning under King Alfred the Great. The Danish king Canute ruled England from Winchester. The city’s bishops enjoyed special influence and prestige, and several of them, in addition to several early rulers, have monuments in the cathedral, which is the city’s principal treasure today.

The building lacks a spire, and it may appear unremarkable from the outside, but it is the world’s longest intact medieval cathedral, and the Perpendicular Gothic interior has a noble simplicity. The first church, called the Old Minster, was built in the 7th century. Among its early bishops was St. Swithin, whose name has been linked with rain ever since the monks moved his remains in 971 from a humble spot he had chosen outside the church to a place of honor within, and the saint reprovingly pelted them with rain.

In 1079 the new Norman bishop started a new cathedral and then pulled down the Old Minster. The cathedral was consecrated in 1093. Work continued through the early 12th century, and this is the core of the building as it stands today. The east end was expanded in the 13th century on ground so boggy that it had to be laid on a giant raft of logs. The rest of the building, including the glorious nave and choir, was rebuilt in the 14th century. Reconstruction of the western end ceased for about twenty-five years after the Black Death in 1349, being completed about 1420. During the English Civil Wars, the great west window was destroyed; it was later reconstructed as a mosaic.

The remains of Canute, William Rufus, and other kings are all muddled up together in mortuary chests, and an ongoing project seeks to determine the identities of those in the chests. Also buried in the cathedral is novelist Jane Austen. The small statue of a diver just outside the lady chapel represents William Walker, who in the early 1900s heroically saved the east end from collapse when the timber raft began giving way. He worked for six years in pitch darkness and black water, single-handedly building a new foundation.