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 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.