Postcard from Winchester

The Christmas market, a feature of many European towns, as indeed are markets.  English markets are, traditionally, the place you go to buy fresh veg and knock-off DVDs, most other shopping taking place in the supermarket or on-line.  There is, however, a growing taste for Christmas Markets that may or may not be linked directly to a growing taste for hot sausage and mulled wine from November onwards.  If Sainsbury’s had discovered in 1974 that all you needed to keep customers coming back was to serve them alcohol and hot sausage while they shopped, the world might be a very different place, with lots less Tesco in it.

Birmingham has an enormous Christmas market.  The press used to have an annual story of reporting that the council has re-branded Christmas as ‘Winterval’, however, realising that a) nobody actually believed this for a second and b) even if they did, nobody cared, the press now report annually that Birmingham’s German Market is causing friction because it takes trade away from the rest of the traders in Birmingham.  I don’t know if this is true but I can make an assumption – it’s not.  This assumption is made not on the number of times I have visited Birmingham’s Christmas Market (once, I had a hot sausage, it was lovely) but on the number of times I have visited Christmas markets in general both here and in Europe and, unless Birmingham’s resident traders get rid of all of the stock they sell for the other eleven months of the year and stock wooden Christmas tree decorations, scented candles, warm wine or hot sausage, then I really don’t see that the German Market is going to be taking an awful lot of trade away from the Bull Ring.

Winchester has a Christmas Market, and it’s well worth a visit, also obviously the opinion of everyone that lives in the South of England.  Staying for the weekend in the centre of the city, I was lucky enough to be able to visit early in the morning and late in the evening and to get there on foot.  It was charming, it was lively and if you wanted either scented candles or wooden Christmas tree decorations, it was the place to be.  I’m not sure it would have had quite the same charm if you had arrived after ten o’clock, failed to get parked, eventually got parked, walked to the Christmas Market and discovered a crowd roughly the size of the ones normally associated with the overthrowing of despots, but tetchier.

Winchester though is an exceptionally charming town and this year, as well as having that extra jingle-scented sparkle that comes with the season, there was an added attraction.

‘Sound II’ is a sculpture by Anthony Gormley that stands in the crypt of Winchester cathedral.  The crypt itself is devoid of decoration; white stone, with Normal arches.  Apart from the statue it is unremarkable except for having that sense of peace that buildings that measure their span in millennia acquire.  It is, however, prone to flooding and when there has been rain in the chalk hills surrounding Winchester, then a couple of weeks later the crypt first becomes damp, then wet, then home to a foot or two of standing water.

Which Sound II stands in, the figure upright and holding a bowl, listening to the sound of his soul, standing up to his knees in water.

I have never been anywhere quite like it.  The sense of quiet, of stillness, is quite extraordinary, as people automatically either lower their voices or edit anything unnecessary out of their conversation.  One could stand and stare for hours, or do the next best thing and take many photographs to look at later.

Above ground, the Christmas Market is hustle, bustle, and in fairness charming if busy, with the shopkeepers resident in posh garden sheds looking for all the world like elves running an arts and craft business.  Below ground, silence and stillness.  And all around, people moving from shop to shop and stall to stall, looking for a gift that will make a loved one’s face light up on Christmas Day, or at least a hot sausage.

Postcard from Winchester - the Itchen

Winchester's river is The Itchen (it's too much to hope for that wherever Winchester is twinned with has a waterway called The Scratchen). Apparently in Roman times, the river was a bit of a bother, with being wet an all. The Romans got in their engineers and moved the river a few hundred yards to the left. The result is that today, the Itchen is possibly the most well behaved and mannered river I have ever seen, perfectly in keeping with the atmosphere of the town itself.

The river is about fifteen foot wide and a foot deep, and runs along what is now, thanks to building on both sides of the town, the backs of houses and a rather attractive footpath. It has all the advantages of a river; calming influence of water, ideal location for a riverside pub, ducks and so on, without the disadvantages that they can sometimes bring - raging angry torrents of water, graveyard for shopping trollies, bloated corpse lucky dip, that kind of thing. Apparently the river used to be twice as wide - oooohhhhhh, terrifying.

'Sire, hostile forces are massing on the other side of the river!'
'Worry not, they will never get across its expanse.'
'But sire...they have wellington boots!'
'Arse!'.

And so on.

The town still has a working water mill. Naturally this is now run by the National Trust and so one could buy bags of flour milled at the mill (I trust them, and did not look too closely at the empty bags from catering packs of Tesco value strong white flour in the bins round the back) as well as all the other necessities that populate a National Trust gift shop, such as jams, plush otters and a lady volunteer behind the till flustered by more than one customer at a time.


Because the temperature was so cold it hurt to take a deep breath, there was an interesting effect in the churning waters at the foot of the mill race, the spray had frozen to the lowest parts of the vegetation growing on the riverbank, giving the waterside a festive, decorative appearance, for all the world like those LED icicles that people hang from their guttering at Christmas, except not so chavvy.


The river wanders round the backs of houses and gardens, the gardens backing onto the river. One, rather magnificently, backs onto an area where the river diverts around...well it probably qualifies as an island, just, as 'stump in the water' sounds mean and it did have a population of three ducks. It also had space for somebody to nail up a (small) sign that read 'private'. What might seem like a mean and petty gesture was, in this instance, transformed into a magnificent one - imagine being able to say in all honesty that you had your own private island. Surely that is a privilege reserved for people like Richard Branson or Bond villains. Maybe Winchester is where Bond villains retire to, and the owner of the private island is constructing a death ray in his shed, an occupation he describes as 'pottering'.

Postcard from Winchester - the Great Hall and the round table

One of the most common occupations for the guides at Winchester Cathedral is redirecting tourists who wander the place in search of the Round Table. Apparently they take quite some convincing that the round table is not, in fact, in the cathedral, but is in the nearby Great Hall and no, you can't have your entrance fee back.

The Great Hall is a pretty spectacular space, it has four main attractions, the table itself, high on the wall at one end, huge and imposing, like a vast medieval dart board, the stained glass windows, the wall decorated with a family tree so vast it's like a family forest, and the gates.

The space itself is astonishing, huge thick walls and lofty beams. This is the sort of place that can be easily populated by the imagination with feast tables crammed with people eating medieval food, which I think was basically things killed in the forest that could have an apple shoved in their mouths or up their arse for a garnish, or equally filled with soldiers and nervous horses about to ride into battle. Or tourists. Actually you didn't have to imagine that last one. There weren't actually that many tourists there but the ones that did come and go were at least polite enough to shut the door, not that it mattered as the Hall was unheated but it was a nice thought.


The table itself is an astonishing piece of work, and the connection with the Arthurian legend is a powerful pull. It's seven hundred years old which means, even if Arthur himself didn't sit there sipping mead from the grail or whatever, it's a pretty potent artefact. And it's round! How cool is that! That means everyone is equal and so sits at the head, or that there's no head. It also means that the folk sitting at the table had to find other means of establishing their seniority, such as getting a tall chair, or a swivel chair, or butchering their neighbour with a broadsword following a trifling argument over pudding. It is not known if the round table etiquette also did away with he traditional knight maiden knight maiden dinner party seating arrangement, and if a kiddy table version was ever used, it is no longer in existence.


At the other end of the Great Hall is a very imposing piece that must have seemed like a really, really good idea at the time. Two gates, made of stainless steel, at least thirty feet high and breathtaking in their design, looking like a something from Lord of the Rings, crossed with art deco, they remind one of the sort of doors that Flash Gordon used to punch Ming the Merciless through. Cut into the top is a C circling a D. Yup, these gates were installed to celebrate the marriage of Charles and Diana. Oops. Guess that makes them as historic an artefact now as the round table.

Postcard from Winchester - the cathedral

Winchester cathedral, possibly the finest example of a Norman cathedral ever to have a pop song written about it. It's home to quite a lot of distinguished remains. There's the tomb of Jane Austin, with an inscription so genteel that it completely omits to mention that she was a writer. This was because writing books about bonnets and so on was considered an unsuitable job for a woman at the time rather than her other accomplishments being so astonishing that the writing was very much an afterthought. The tomb is visited by three types of people, there are those who come to pay homage to the great writer, there are the Japanese, who appear to have a particular affection for her (just why is not clear, possibly it's the Japanese fascination with manners, or bonnets, or just that somebody some day started the rumour that Japanese people are fascinated with Jane Austin and so you notice them more than most. Everyone in Winchester is too polite to ask.), and there are people who are baffled that somebody who wrote a screenplay for a BBC three parter earlier in the year died without their hearing about it.

The other famous resident is St Swithen. If you want to prey for good weather, this is the tomb for you.

There is another, very famous resident - an Anthony Gormley statue donated by the artist that stands in the crypt. The figure stands holding a bowl and when the crypt floods every year, the water laps at the statue's knees. It's quite an eerie presence, standing alone in an empty (one hopes) crypt. Just what is he considering? Some say he contemplates his soul, others that he is pondering why anyone would build a cathedral on a spring that gushes to life every year when it rains in the hills.

One does the cathedral tourist thing, wandering around with head craned back, trying to take in the details and knowing that there are a thousand masons' marks and features hidden in the gloom or behind a pillar, knowable only to god. Ones wanders round muttering 'how did they do this?', the answer of course lying in either block and tackle, or alien assistance. Prayer may have come into it but a shitload of stone imported from France and a sustaining turnip soup for the workers is probably a better bet.


A special place among the kings and queens and saints and bishops and one lonely crusader is reserved for a statue of William Walker. Essentially, the cathedral was built on a marsh, and a spring. Obviously while the monks excelled at piety they were not the greatest surveyors in the world. So they put down a raft of trees and built the cathedral on those. A few centuries later and the building develops a list. One side of it needs to be underpinned, so they dig down and, the hole floods. How to work underwater? This is the turn of the century, and while the snorkel has been invented, sexy wet suits have not. So, a bloke called William Walker gets on his diving suit and, often working in complete darkness, replaces the rotting foundation with concrete blocks. He literally saved the entire cathedral with his bare hands, which is what the inscription on his memorial says. Not a bad epitaph. Also...straight to heaven!

While the the choir was practicing for the evenings performance. What's the only thing better than beautiful choral music in a cathedral? Free beautiful choral music in a cathedral!

The cathedral itself is one of those huge Norman 'we are here to stay' jobs that dominate the landscape and at the time would have given rise to lots of middle class angst as people sat around discussing how the thing was really not sympathetic with the surrounding landscape or the architecture that it was being built next to, except that when the Normans were building cathedrals there was no middle class, no such thing as angst, people were too busy subsistence farming turnips and dying at age thirty (like some sort of medieval 'Logan's Run') to mutter darkly about planning permission, and any architecture that the Normans didn't like near there cathedral quickly became either kindling or hardcore, depending on its construction.


Finally, one of the best features is the stained glass window. During the Civil War the Roundheads, to show their piety, broke all the windows and decorations in the cathedral. Oddly, this did not result in direct devine retribution, which was put off until the restoration, instead the monks gathered the bits of stained glass and hid them. Then when the restoration came they, er, restored the stained glass window. Except they didn't bother to re-assemble it as it was. Obviously not big jigsaw fans, the result was a marvellous, modernist Picasso style window, centuries ahead of the modernist movement.

Postcard from Winchester - the town (and the gowns)

Zoom! What's that? Zoom! There goes another! Looking out of the window of the pub as I wonder if my headache might be eased with the ingestion of a cheeky breakfast pint, I am occasionally distracted by a flitting figure charging past. The third such blur in motion gives a better chance of examination and the sprinting forms reveal themselves to be schoolboys, rushing either from or, given their haste, to, a lesson. Not to be outdone, the last of them is followed some minutes later by a loping master, his gown billowing out behind him in his wake.

Schoolboys and masters abound in Winchester, home of course of the famous school. I marvelled from my breakfast table that the boys seemed to have lessons on Saturdays and Sundays as well as no doubt in the week. Still, at around six grand a term, I'd bloody we'll expect a seven day a week timetable as well. The academics lend Winchester a certain chalky charm. The boys are typical public school types, tall, with good teeth and hair just short of the maximum permitted by the school rules. They seem to exist in a constant state of rush, with either a folder or some sort of sporting item under their arm. The masters, the loping one excepted, make much more stately progress along the street. Shaped by rather too many rather good dinners, with their gowns on they look like Batman after he has really, really let himself go.

There were schoolboys too in the shop across the road from the pub. An odd place. It was the sort of shop that you would expect to see in a small village where the posh second home owners arrive with their own shopping and only need to shop for either wine or recreation, and where the locals only do a top up shop occasionally, getting most of their stuff in the nearby big town. Thus it has one of everything when it comes to vegetables, a goodish selection of canned stuff and a whole room dedicated to very posh wines. Because of the schoolboys, it also has a selection of the sort of stuff that schoolboys love, sweets and pop and porn. OK, it doesn't have porn, but it has lots of sweets and pop and pot noodle.

The town itself is lovely. Lots of tourists mean a big tourist information centre, where you can get a map of the town in case you get lost on its one high street. The tourist information centre also sells books about the area and I was tempted by 'Haunted Winchester'. However, flipping through I saw that the Wykeham Arms wasn't mentioned. This is probably a good thing as, while of course I love a good ghost story, the only spirits I want to see when I'm staying in a pub are the ones sloshing about in my glass. Poltergeist activity does not make for a restful night, and when one tries to explain away snoring and trumping in the dark, or the loo seat being left up as paranormal activity, one tends to run into the sort of scepticism that would make Richard Dawkins blink.

Postcard from Winchester - the inn

The Wykeham Arms in Winchester is astonishingly good. The place is decorated with the stuff that the landlord has collected - which appears to be everything in the world, and then every pewter tankard ever made. A bloke would describe it as the interior of the ultimate shed, a woman might describe it as charming, and tolerate it in a way that would baffle and annoy any chap who has been forced into disposing of his plastic dinosaur collection on eBay because the space in the back room is needed for a wardrobe, or a baby. I suppose the difference is that given the place is cluttered to the point where you suspect the landlord is a hoarder, it's all astonishingly dust free. I suspect dedicated staff, or elves. The place looks like a posh junk shop that's licensed. Luckily, it also has wonderful open fires, sells fabulous beer (Jack Frost) and has regulars that lend it, well, charm.

In a perfect world, my own home would resemble the rooms at the Wykeham, especially with regard to ale on tap. But it takes a lot of space to make a room look good by cramming it with curios. The ceiling has to be high to enable the tankards to dangle freely, and the art on the walls has to be arranged just so, with oil paintings cheek by jowl with framed post cards, cigarette cards and the odd Victorian porno shot in sepia to see if you are paying attention.

The regulars pack the place out, and one has to be careful where one steps for fear of treading on dog. The resulting look of hurt that any of the charming and well bred animals that litter the floor on a Saturday night would give you would be almost as bad as the savaging one might also expect if you tread on the wrong paw.

Idiosyncratic charm through cluttered curios can be a look that's hard to pull off. Beer helps, both serving it and drinking it. If in Winchester, this is the place to drink. There's a lot to see in the city but equally a lot to see in each room of the pub. They should do one of those booklets where you have to spot a certain item in each room, spot them all...win a pint!