Winchester, all day

One of the reasons I, personally, was very keen on coming to Winchester is because Matilda of Flanders, on whom I will eventually write 30,000 blood-stained words - or "Your Girl," as James insists on referring to her - was crowned here. O! such a connection!


We like fancy ceilings

Yeh, right. Turns out she would have been crowned in the Old Minster, which was demolished to make way for the new, present cathedral in about 1093. Normans and their determination to have shiny new-fangled things, I say. She wasn't even mentioned in the City Museum! Nor anywhere in the cathedral! Humph. Just because basically no one has heard of her...


13th century tiles, upon which visitors are asked to 'tread with care'

We liked the cathedral nonetheless, attending Evensong twice and going once to gawk as tourists. It has a mighty impressive stone screen, with lots of statuary in it, at the end of the quire; Jane Austen has a plaque somewhere in the place, but I never found it. There's a little section off to the side with the Winchester Bible - glorious illuminated pages; most of the pictures in the New Testament aren't finished, probably because they ran out of money, and maybe nine of the picture-capitals have actually been cut out at some stage: possibly for well-to-do ladies to put in their scrapbooks. There's also a Triforium - in what's basically a mezzanine level - with bits and pieces of statuary that was largely destroyed thanks to the Reformation and Bully Boy Cromwell.

We also visited the City Museum. We're big fans of this sort of museum, by now: it's free; it's not very big; objects have been carefully chosen to give a good overall impression of different stages in the city or county's development; there are little hands-on activities for kids; and it's not overwhelming. To get a sense of the development and achievements and history of just one are is incredibly valuable, I think. Even if they neglected Matilda. Winchester, of course, was the site of an Iron Age settlement - there's a nice river nearby - and also a Roman settlement:


A mosaic discovered basically intact, just out of Winchester

The rest of the day was spent organising the rest of our trip, lazing around, and then drinking beer on a patio next to the river. Delightful.