The first church was built on the site about AD 648 and the foundations of the present Cathedral were laid out by the first Norman bishop, Walkelin in 1079. The Norman cathedral was consecrated in 1093 and the relics of St Swithun were transfered to their new resting place within on July 15th before the 'Old Minster', built in the middle of the seventh century and becomming a cathedral when it became the seat of the bishop of Wessex in 676, was torn down.
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The cathedral church is dedicated to St Swithun or Swithin.
Local legends claims that a great Christian church was established at Winchester in the second century AD during the Roman occupation of Britain.
The see of Wessex was removed to Winchester from Dorchester in Oxfordshire, the first bishop of Winchester being Hedda who died in 705.
The modern diocese includes nearly the whole of Hampshire, part of Surrey and very small portions of Wiltshire, Dorset and Sussex.
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At 164 metres (535 feet), the new Norman church was the longest in the country. The present structure is thirteen metres shorter after the demolition of the Norman towers at the west front in 1350.
The cathedral, on marshy ground, was beset with problems from an early date; towers were proposed on the transept ends, but the plans had to be abandoned. The Normans had built a central tower but this collapsed in 1107. the foundations were not blamed at the time, but rather was seen as a punishment for the fact that the ungodly King William II ('Rufus', killed in suspicious circumstances while hunting in the New Forest in 1100) had been buried within the church.
With Winchester as capital of the country under the Saxon and Norman kings, both town and cathedral had many royal associations; Richard I (1189-1199) was crowned here in 1194, Henry IV (1399-1413) was married in the cathedral in 1401 while a later royal marriage here, that of the staunchly Catholic Queen Mary I (1553-1558) to King Philip of Spain in 1554, sent trepidation throughout the realm that England might become a province of Spain.
Since building of the cathedral commenced in 1079, the cathedral has seen many changes. Only the crypt and transepts of Walkelin's original Romanesque cathedral church survive unaltered. Building of the retrochoir began in 1202. The West Front was rebuilt between 1350 and 1410, the work starting with the removal of the Norman west towers. During this period, the nave was also rebuilt in the Perpendicular style and revaulted. The piers were recast, the heads of the Norman arcade were removed and installed at a higher level, the original work of three storeys being made into two storeys. The East Bay of the Lady Chapel dates from 1500.
Early in the twentieth century serious signs of weakness in the fabric of the cathedral became evident, the problems largely caused by the failure of a large part of the Norman foundations in the soft, waterlogged soil close to the river Itchen which consisted of wooden piles or tree trunks set horizontaly. Very extensive restoration works were carried out between 1905 and 1912 under the supervision of TG Jackson emplying two hundred and fifty people. William Walker made thousands of dives in the cold and murky water to underpin the failing foundations of almost all the walls in concrete.
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| St Swithun |
| Probably the most famous person associated with Winchester cathedral (which is dedicated to him) because of the legend which claims that if it rains on his feast day, it will rain for the next forty days. He is considered to have enlarged the cathedral where his relics were transferred from the 'Old Minster' on July 15th, 1093. The gold shrine studded with jewels was the gift of King Edgar (959-975), stood in a small chapel behind the great reredos until it was destroyed in 1538. |
At the time of the [[Domesday survey]] of [[1086]], the [[Bishop of Winchester]] held ten [[Somerset manors]] ([[Bleadon]], [[Leigh]] ([[Lydeard]]), [[Lydeard St Lawrence]], [[Maidenbrook]], [[Nynehead]], [[Pitminster]], [[Rimpton]], [[Shopnoller]], [[Stoke St Mary]] and [[Taunton]]).
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