Privacy and cookie settings

Essential cookies support sign-in, security and quiz progress. Optional advertising and analytics require your permission. You can use Fact Central without accepting them.

Optional advertising and tracking are off until a valid consent choice is available.

Useful when testing the site. This preference applies even when you are signed out and stays until you change it or clear browser data.

Read our privacy policy or contact us.
Fact Central
Sign in

City in Hampshire, England

Winchester

Winchester was once the capital of England, and its Round Table has hung on a wall for centuries despite being painted to look like Arthur's.

Winchester
Photo: (CC BY-SA 2.0), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Key information

County
Hampshire
Nation
England
Population
about 48,500 (2021 Census, urban area)
Known for
Winchester Cathedral, King Arthur's Round Table, Winchester College, Jane Austen's grave, Alfred the Great
What locals are called
Wintonians
Famous people
Alfred the Great, Jane Austen, John Keats, Izaak Walton
Football clubs
Winchester City FC

About Winchester

The Round Table that isn't Arthur's

Hanging on the wall of the Great Hall is a huge round oak tabletop, painted with the names of Arthur's knights and a Tudor rose at its centre. It weighs about a ton and is nearly six metres across. Legend says it belonged to King Arthur. Tree-ring and radiocarbon dating say otherwise: it was made in the 13th century, probably in Edward I's reign. The paintwork is later still. Henry VIII had it repainted in 1522 to impress the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and Arthur himself, with a Tudor face, sits at the top. The Great Hall is all that survives of Winchester Castle, which was largely demolished after the Civil War.

When Winchester ruled England

Before London took charge, Winchester was the centre of the kingdom. As Wessex's capital it was the seat of Alfred the Great, who died in 899, and his successors. A statue of Alfred, raised in 1901, stands at the foot of the High Street, with his sword held upside down like a cross. After 1066, William the Conqueror had himself crowned in London but also took a ceremonial crown-wearing at Winchester, and had the royal treasury kept here. The Domesday survey was compiled with Winchester as a major hub, and one of the great books is said to have been known as the Winchester Book. The city's decline began when government drifted to Westminster, but it never lost its air of an ancient capital.

A cathedral with a very long nave

Winchester Cathedral has one of the longest naves of any medieval cathedral in Europe, and its total length is among the greatest. Building began in 1079 under Bishop Walkelin, and the crypt below still floods in wet winters. It holds Antony Gormley's statue Sound II, which stands in the water. Jane Austen is buried in the north aisle, having died in Winchester in 1817 while seeking medical treatment. Her memorial stone, strikingly, doesn't mention her novels. A brass plaque was added later to put that right. The cathedral also holds the Winchester Bible, a 12th-century masterpiece of illumination, hand-copied on calfskin, and the mortuary chests said to contain the bones of early Saxon kings.

Schoolboys, poets and Keats's autumn

Winchester College was founded in 1382 by Bishop William of Wykeham and is one of England's oldest schools still running continuously. Its pupils have long been called Wykehamists. It has its own peculiar slang, known as Notions, which includes terms unknown to the outside world. In September 1819 John Keats walked the water meadows by the River Itchen and wrote To Autumn, one of the best-loved poems in English. The mellow fruitfulness he describes is easy to find on the same riverside path today. Angling writer Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler, spent his final years here and is buried in the cathedral.

Food, markets and an old Christmas habit

Hampshire is watercress and pork country, and Winchester is its market heart. The Winchester Christmas Market, set around the cathedral, has become one of the biggest in the south of England. The city is also close to the Watercress Line, the heritage railway running out of Alresford, which is the watercress capital of England. The Itchen, a famous chalk stream, runs right through the city and its trout fishing is celebrated. The Hospital of St Cross, a short walk away, still offers the Wayfarer's Dole, a small piece of bread and a horn of beer, to anyone who asks, a tradition said to date back to the 12th century.

Sport and the Winchester sound

Winchester City FC represent the city in non-league football, while rugby is played strongly at several clubs. The school's own game, Winchester College football, is a bizarre hybrid with its own rules and a pitch of tiny dimensions. It is played principally at the school, but also by Old Wykehamists, including at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Wintonians also have strong claims on the Hampshire cricket tradition of nearby Southampton, while the city hosts regular running events along the Itchen Navigation. The Great Hall, the cathedral, two surviving medieval gates (Kingsgate, with the church of St Swithun-upon-Kingsgate built over it, and Westgate) and the Buttercross, a Gothic market monument, give the city a compact and walkable centre.

Related articles

Report an error