Medieval England

Apologies that it's only me in this picture on the postcard, I didn't have one with both of us that was a vertical!  And welcome to Southampton, our one and only English port.

Our first stop was the old city of Winchester, one that dates back to Roman times.  Julia, our excellent guide, shared that any city with "chester" on the end of it tells you that during Rome's occupation of Britannia, as they called it, meant this town was a place of fortification.  Many of the old buildings there were made with pieces of flint, something that was accessible in the chalky hills in this part of England.

I only added this photo for a laugh.  Royal Caribbean's loyalty program is called Crown and Anchor so we've been seeing a lot of that phrase over the past seven months.

Winchester, as well as Salisbury where we would go later, were two of the most important Medieval cities in England and still two of the best preserved, each having a cathedral dating from that time when this was the Kingdom of Wessex.  Pictured above is King Alfred the Great, an Anglo-Saxon ruler at the end of the 9th century.  He and his army defended their lands against the Viking invaders, finally negotiating a peace treaty in 886.  Thanks to that and other farsighted reforms he made, Alfred is the only English ruler to have the words "the great" added to the end of his title.

Difficult as it is to figure out what these bits of old foundation are at this archaeological site, it's been determined that they are the remains of a convent called Nunnaminster that was founded here by Ealhswith, the wife of Alfred the Great, around 903.  It became one of the largest in England until it was closed by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536.

The pretty River Itchen runs through the city.  Originally it covered most of the ground here, making it boggy and uninhabitable until the Romans learned to control it and dry out the land so they could build.  The area's chalky soil keeps the water clear, and it's also an excellent river to fish.  At first we thought the man in the water near the bridge in the photo on the left was fishing but it turned out he had a metal detector and was retrieving coins that people throw into the river from the bridge.

Winchester was one of the largest Roman cities in Britain and was well defended with a large wall surrounding it.  It was completed in the 3rd century A.D. and enclosed an area of 144 acres.  Behind this gate is all that remains of that wall, it's been repurposed and recycled into walls and buildings in other parts of the city.

Just some of the pretty garden area we walked through in town.

In this wall that surrounds the Bishop's Palace you can see bits of red terracotta that are broken bits of pottery left from Roman days.

Still the residence and office of the Bishop of Winchester, Church of England, not Catholic, which was the castle of a powerful bishop during Medieval times, second only to the Bishop of Canterbury.  We've seen Bishop's Palaces all over Europe but it wasn't until today that I learned they are called a palace because a Catholic bishop is a prince of Rome, hence a prince lived in a palace.  Tuck that away in your trivia notebook!  Good to note here that the fact that this home is still used for the same purpose after hundred of years tells you this bishop's ecclesiastical power is still intact.

I liked the designs on this house with all the different types of stone, including the flint again.

One of my favorite authors, Jane Austen, is usually associated with Bath, but she really spent most of her life in Winchester.  The house on the right is where she spent her last days and died July 18, 1817.

Winchester College was begun during the 15th century to educate boys who could then be sent on to Oxford to be trained as priests whose ranks had been decimated during the years of the Black Plague as they attended the sick.  Today it's still a prep school with fees that run about $45,000 per year.

Two of the gates into the old city.  I thought the juxtaposition of the old gate with the modern car going through it was kind of interesting.  

Not the best photo thanks to construction but you can get an idea of the lathe and plaster exteriors of Medieval buildings here.  The plaster was made from the chalk found in the hills.

The small section of this house that sticks out is something called jettying, we've already seen it in France but not so deep.  Again, it adds space to the house but not to the taxable part on the lower level.

Remember that boggy ground I mentioned earlier?  Winchester Cathedral was built on a poor spot of ground, unstable peat, and began sinking over the years.  You'll note that it only has a small tower, a tall one would have been impossible here as the ground wouldn't have been able to bear the weight.  With the beloved ancient cathedral on the verge of collapse, a diver named William Walker was sent into the murky waters below the foundation to shore it up enough that permanent repairs could be made.  It took him six years, working in complete darkness and in water at depths of up to 20 feet, to get hundreds of thousands of blocks and bricks in place with tens of thousands of bags of concrete to complete his task.  Once Walker was done the water was pumped out from below and conventional bricklayers could go in and repair the cathedral's damaged walls.  A pretty amazing story.

The columns used here were probably from a prior Roman structure.

Flying buttresses strengthen the walls to help hold up the roof and create a pretty aisle of archways along the outside of the building.

Unfortunately our tour didn't allow time for us to go inside.  The glass in the main window is original to the Medieval cathedral but not the design.  During the 100 Years War a group on horseback rode into the cathedral and proceeded to smash the window.  The glass was collected by the city's residents and eventually reworked into the window you see today.

Winchester is the longest cathedral in Europe.  The oldest part is the transept, the part with the abbreviated tower.

This ancient building dates back to the late 11th century.  You can see that the bit on the far left was added later as it has a pointed Gothic window rather than the rounded Romanesque.  It would have come after the time of the Black Death.

The Salisbury Plain was known during the Medieval period as producing the finest wool in Britain, thousands of sheep dotted the hillsides.  It wasn't until more recent developments in agriculture that crops such as pharmaceutical poppies,

and wheat could be grown in this poor soil.  Now there are few sheep and lots of fields.

Thanks to a road closure on the route we were take to Salisbury we detoured to a highway that took us past Stonehenge! We didn't stop but could see it clearly from the road and I was able to get surprisingly decent photos through the windows of the bus.  Traffic slows down along this spot due to gawkers so it helped we weren't zooming by.  

Stonehenge was where I had really wanted to go from Southampton then got too lazy with making it happen.  What a treat to be able to see it by happenstance!  This ancient site dates back to Neolithic times, before the Celtic druids who have often been designated as the creators.  Around 5000 years ago farmers rolled these massive stones on sleds, using logs beneath them for 180 miles.  It is mind boggling how it was all done.  

Looking in the background of this photo you can see the rounded fortifications of the hilltop known as Old Sarum, our next destination.

This view on the entrance sign gives you a little better idea of the site of this Iron Age hill fort.  

We had a view from here down into Salisbury and its cathedral.

When William the Conqueror, our friend from Normandy, took over his new lands he created a series of castles, with one of them being here at Old Sarum.  Karl is walking across what would have been an impassable moat to enter the grounds, then it was through what would have been the gatehouse.

After over a thousand years there isn't a whole lot left but you get an idea of what the fortifications would have encompassed.  This would have been the busy courtyard of the castle.

The castle's keep was located where the stones in the left photo are located.  Around the outside of the fortifications would have been more of the murder holes that you may remember from Blarney Castle.  Here they wouldn't have dropped hot oil down through them, that was too expensive, it would have been hot urine instead.  Nasty!

This was a natural defensive site sat atop a lump of chalk.  The inhabitants of 400 B.C. dug ditches and created defenses using deer antlers and cow scapulas as tools.  The site was was briefly occupied by the Romans but it was the Normans who really put the place on the map.

Another view of the courtyard looking towards the castle keep and bailey.

At one point the great tower that was located here would have been the king's residence.

Here's the royal privy.  These weren't flushed by any kind of water, instead, straw and bark chips were thrown into the deep pits to absorb the waste.  When the king wasn't in residence someone would be lowered into the pit to dig out the contents.  Can't imagine what lengths the servants would have gone to to avoid that job!

The first Salisbury Cathedral was located near the castle.  All that remains are a few rocks on this outline.  The small cathedral was built here to be near the castle shortly after the Normans arrived, in the 1070's.  By the late 12th century the friars here were fed up with the goings on at the garrison, church and state in such close quarters wasn't a good combo, and they asked for land to build a new cathedral.

I found this sign but chanced a view anyway.

It was a peaceful and beautiful sight.  I do love the English countryside. 🩷

There was no town in Salisbury before the cathedral was built there.  Legend has it that the church was to be built wherever the arrow landed that England's best bowman could shoot from the old cathedral.  However, since the site ended up being further than any bowman could shoot, the story changed over the years that the arrow mortally wounded a white stag and that Salisbury Cathedral was built on the site where it died.

Random story here about this replica of an English Spitfire, the beloved plane of the RAF during WW2.  This was THE plane of the Battle of Britain, keeping the island from being invaded by Germany in 1940, after Goering had promised Hitler they could defeat Britain by air in just four days.  Thanks to the efforts of these small planes and their pilots for several months, the Germans eventually gave up on their invasion plan and turned their eyes towards opening a front in Russia, one of their biggest mistakes of the war.  As to the random story, it was discovered in just the last 10 years that several hundred Spitfires were made right here in Salisbury, with different parts being created in different small businesses throughout the town.  The plane memorial commemorates those community efforts.

Most of the old stones from the original Salisbury Cathedral were used to make the walls around the new town.

Many are easy to pick out in the wall.

Rather than being a gazebo this structure is called a Poultry Cross.  It was originally placed here in the 14th century, then modified in the 18th century, to serve as a marker for the markets in Salisbury.  Of the original four this is one of only two remaining.

Gates into the city center where we enjoyed an excellent lunch at a fish and chips shop.  Then I had some shortbread from a local bakery while Karl enjoyed apple danish.

At our last destination I finally got a selfie with both of us in it at Salisbury Cathedral.

Construction here was begun in 1220 and took only 38 years to complete, except for the spire that was added later.  It has gone through updates inside and out since then.  It's a cathedral designed for processions.

Statuary on the outside.

Here again we have a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

More facade statuary, a row of saints behind Mary who each have a small window behind them that lets out the sound of the organ, making it appear the music is coming from the wall.

Another Mary relief above the doors.

There is an interior courtyard before you enter the church.

The interior is spacious and definitely Gothic, reaching to the sky, taller than Winchester but not as long.  Two unusual features here are the modern font in the middle and the screen that was removed at the front of the church.

Salisbury was only the second church to use arches in what was called Early English Gothic style.

These limestone columns are load bearing and there are at least four of them next to one another in each location.  The thinner, dark columns are a local marble.

This unique contraption is actually the world's oldest working mechanical clock, made in 1386.  It was to tell the priests when it was time to pray. and to make sure religious services took place on time.  It tells time by striking a bell every hour.

This very modern looking baptismal font in the center of Salisbury Cathedral was designed by William Pye, who is a favorite artist of King Charles.  The stillness on top is supposed to reflect one's faith, while the moving water on the end indicates life.

Another view of the water that runs off the end of the font, plus another reflective surface on this altar pictured on the right.

Some of the stained glass.

A look towards the back of the cathedral from the front

One of the unique things about Salisbury Cathedral is that it's built above the Avon River (not the same one as goes past Shakespeare's Stratford), you are literally walking on water when you are in there.  This hole in the floor is opened multiple times a day as volunteers explain how they check the river's level.

A stick is lowered into the hole to check the water height.  If the level gets too high it can destroy the electric wires that run below the floor, if it gets too low the cathedral will crack and collapse.  The local water board keeps the level optimal.  Since the Avon has five rivers that flow into it it's a lot of water to keep track of and control.

The ceiling in the cathedral is lovely.

To help bear the weight of the tall spire there are hidden buttresses, like the two arches that come together next to the load bearing column on the left, and the scissor arches like the photo on the right which are mirror shapes one above the other.

A rather odd spot in the cathedral is this "cadaver tomb" of Thomas Bennet, who was a secretary to Cardinal Woolsey in the 16th century.  This style of tomb had come into fashion a century earlier to show the humility of the departed and that "death is the great equalizer".

Look closely to see the bit of color left on the angels in both photos, the cathedral was once a very colorful place.  The faces below the angels are likenesses of the masons who built the cathedral, an interesting memorial to them.  A truly surprising  face, we were told, was the fellow on left, who has been identified as a Christian from North Africa,   To have a man of color working as an artisan in England in the 13th century was completely unexpected.

Closeup of the more modern stained glass above the altar.

Our last stop was a spot in the cathedral with this beautiful ceiling where a small, light proof tent stands.

Inside is the best preserved of the four original copies of the Magna Carta that exist in the world.

This important document, signed in 1215, was written in this tiny script on sheepskin parchment.  Parts of it, including the separation of church and state, and that not even the king is above the law, have had an impact on constitutions around the world, including ours.  The interesting thing is that its importance may not be felt as strongly in Britain as they don't have a constitution, but it did help set up the relationship between the monarchy and the Parliament, and/or the Church of England.

The spire was added in 1330 and is the tallest masonry spire in England.

 Salisbury Cathedral is a beautiful Medieval structure and a marvelous mix in many ways of old and new, a great place to visit as a finish to our stop in Southampton.