Cathedrals -- England; England -- Description and travel
It is, too, when you consider it, utterly lonely. The revolution we
call the Reformation upon which the modern world turns and turns as
upon a pivot, while it spared Winchester Cathedral, though reluctantly,
swept away all the buildings which surrounded it. The great monastery
is gone, scarcely a sign of it remains. Nothing at all is left of the
famous nunnery of St Mary. Of Wolvesey Castle there are a few beautiful
ruins, of Hyde Abbey, all has been swept away, even the stones, even
the bones of Alfred. Nor have the other and later religious houses,
with which Winchester was full, fared better. It is difficult to find
even the sites of the houses of the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the
Austin Friars, the Carmelites. And what remains of the College of St
Elizabeth, and, but for a Norman doorway, now in Catholic hands, of the
Hospital of St Mary Magdalen? Only the Hospital of St John remains at
the east end of the High Street, still in possession of its fine Hall and
Chapel, and the great school founded by William of Wykeham in 1382,
"for seventy poor and needy scholars and clerks living college-wise in
the same, studying and becoming proficient in grammaticals or the art
and science of grammar." It remains without compare, the oldest and the
greatest school in England, whose daughter is Eton and whose late
descendant is Harrow.
To say that the Cathedral, the College and the Hospital of St John are
all that remains of mediaeval Winchester would not, perhaps, be
strictly true; but it is so near the truth that one might say it
without fear of contradiction. Most of the old churches even have
perished. There remain St John Baptist, which can boast of Transitional
arcades, and fifteenth century screen and pulpit; St Maurice with a
Norman doorway; St Peter with its twelfth and thirteenth century work;
St Bartholomew with some Norman remains near the site of Hyde Abbey;
and in the High Street there is more than one fine old house. The fact
that so little remains cannot altogether be placed to the discredit of
the Reformation and the Puritan fanatics. Until the eighteenth century
something remained of Hyde Abbey, much of the Hospital of St Mary
Magdalen; the city walls were then practically perfect, having all
their five gates, north, south, east and west, and King's gate; now of
all these only the Westgate of the thirteenth century remains to us
with the King's gate over which is the little church of St Swithin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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