More to the west in Hampshire, upon the Havant water, was Boseham, a very famous castle long since swept away; and upon the inlet of Portsmouth, Porchester, a noble combination of Roman and Norman masonry. Within its area is contained a parish church and churchyard, and here was the favourite muster-place for troops destined for Havre. On the opposite side of the Solent, in the centre of the Isle of Wight, is Carisbroke, celebrated for its keep and mound, and its wells of unusual depth, and on the opposite mainland, at the marshy junction of the Stour and the Wiltshire Avon, stands the ancient keep of Christchurch, placed exceptionally upon the mound of the earlier Twynham. Here also is preserved the Castle Hall, a late Norman building, almost a duplicate of a corresponding structure in Fitzgerald’s castle at Adare, near Limerick. Upon the verge of Southampton Water, between the Anton and the sea, occupying a strong peninsula, is the town of that name, still preserving the remains of its Norman walls, and of the keep of a very formidable castle once included within its area. Inland of this line of castles from the sea northwards to the Thames, the counties of Wilts and Berks showed with Hampshire an abundance of strong places. There, though actually in Hampshire, was Winchester, the British Caerwent and the Roman Venta Belgarum, which in its English days contested with London the supremacy of the South. Strongly fortified with broad and high earthworks and deep ditches, it contained, attached to one angle, the royal castle, and within another, its diagonal, the episcopal keep of Wolvesey, of which the one is now represented by its noble hall, and the other by its rectangular Norman keep. The Hall at Winchester, though of very early English date, is after the Norman type, having three aisles. The castle was the prison of Archbishop Stigand in 1066. Before its gates, in 1075, Earl Waltheof was beheaded. Here, in 1102, was tried the memorable dispute for precedence between York and Canterbury. In 1141 it was defended by the Empress Maud, and here Henry II. held several Parliaments, and Cœur de Lion paused when in the adjacent cathedral he was a second time crowned on his return from captivity in 1189.