(Winchester, England, U.K.)

We arrived in Winchester on a Saturday morning, It was quite busy, with many vendor stalls set up on High Street. Winchester attracts a lot of visitors: the legendary Cathedral is of course a major attraction, but it is far from the only one.

Winchester’s river is called the “Itchen”. Not a particularly elegant name, but it was actually quite peaceful and our walking tour travelled alongside it for quite a while. We learned a bit about geology: much of the area is based on chalk…but did you know that it comes from microscopic, calcium-rich skeletal remains of tiny algae and plankton? The other common material around here (flint) also comes from plankton and sea sponges. You never think about these things on a day-to-day basis…

This was an important Roman town too, although the visible Roman remains are limited to a frankly underwhelming wall fragment. Winchester’s most important period was around the time of the Norman Conquest (1066), when it is was the “second city” of what is now the U.K. That was long after the Roman period, but still quite old.

Another claim to fame of Winchester is Jane Austen. The famous author (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility) spent the last part of her life here. We saw the home (not open to the public) where she died in 1817, as well as the P&G Wells bookshop…where she bought some books and likely other things too. It’s the oldest retail business in Winchester and is “probably” Britain’s oldest bookshop.

Winchester was a walled city, so it naturally had several gates (Northgate, Westgate, etc.). They looked beyond the compass when additional gates were needed: our tour passed through Kingsgate (pictured below). Retail space being at a premium, there is even a bookshop in the bottom left corner of the gate.

It won’t come as any surprise that an ancient city like Winchester has plenty of elite schools. If you’re an English student with the requisite grades and funds, you may end up studying here for part of your academic career (and perhaps end up teaching here afterwards). I took a number of pictures, but the schools tended to be nestled on narrow streets behind imposing walls. The Bishop’s residence was the best institutional picture I took, and it’s not even a school.

Also on our tour were the ruins of Wolvesey Castle. I’ll be sharing some pictures from Wolvesey Castle in a future post, as I had a hard time selecting just one or two photos. And the same goes for Winchester Cathedral, which deserves a separate post for both its story and appearance. It’s impressive and well worth a visit.

Stay tuned for more about those two iconic Winchester sights!