From Wikipedia:
Winchester Cathedral is a Church of England cathedral in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It is one of the largest cathedrals in England, with the longest nave and greatest overall length of any Gothic cathedral in Europe. Dedicated to the Holy Trinity, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and Saint Swithun, it is the seat of the Bishop of Winchester and centre of the Diocese of Winchester. The cathedral is a Grade I listed building.
The cathedral was founded in 642 on a site immediately to the north of the present one. This building became known as the Old Minster. It became part of a monastic settlement in 971. Saint Swithun was buried near the Old Minster and then in it, before being moved to the new Norman cathedral. So-called mortuary chests said to contain the remains of Saxon kings such as King Eadwig of England, first buried in the Old Minster, and his wife Ælfgifu, are in the present cathedral. The Old Minster was demolished in 1093, immediately after the consecration of its successor.
In 1079, Bishop Walkelin began work on a completely new cathedral. Much of the limestone used to build the structure was brought across from the Isle of Wight from quarries around Binstead. Nearby Quarr Abbey draws its name from these workings, as do many local places such as Stonelands and Stonepitts. The remains of the Roman trackway used to transport the blocks are still evident across the fairways of the Ryde Golf Club, where the stone was hauled from the quarries to the hythe at the mouth of Binstead Creek, and thence by barge across the Solent and up to Winchester.
The building was consecrated in 1093. On 8 April of that year, according to the Winchester Annals, "in the presence of almost all the bishops and abbots of England, the monks came with the highest exultation and glory from the old minster to the new one: on the Feast of S. Swithun they went in procession from the new minster to the old one and brought thence S. Swithun's shrine and placed it with honour in the new buildings; and on the following day Bishop Walkelin's men first began to pull down the old minster."
A substantial amount of the fabric of Walkelin's building, including the crypt, transepts and the basic structure of the nave, survives. The original crossing tower, however, collapsed in 1107, an accident blamed by the cathedral's medieval chroniclers on the fact that the dissolute William Rufus had been buried beneath it in 1100. Its replacement, which survives today, is still in the Norman style, with round-headed windows. It is a squat, square structure, 50 feet (15 m) wide, but rising only 35 feet (11 m) above the ridge of the transept roof. The Tower is 45.7 m (150 ft) tall.
Following the accession of Godfrey de Lucy in 1189 a retrochoir was added in the Early English style. The next major phase of rebuilding was not until the mid-fourteenth century, under bishops Edington and Wykeham. Edingdon (1346–1366), removed the two westernmost bays of the nave, built a new west front and began the remodelling of the nave. Under William of Wykeham (1367–1404) the Romanesque nave was transformed, recased in Caen stone and remodelled in the Perpendicular style, with its internal elevation divided into two, rather than the previous three, storeys. The wooden ceilings were replaced with stone vaults. Wykeham's successor, Henry of Beaufort (1405–1447), carried out fewer alterations, adding only a chantry on the south side of the retrochoir, although work on the nave may have continued through his episcopy. His successor, William of Waynflete (1447–1486), built another chantry in a corresponding position on the north side. Under Bishops Peter Courtenay (1486–1492) and Thomas Langton (1493–1500), there was more work. De Lucy's Lady Chapel was lengthened, and the Norman side aisles of the presbytery replaced. In 1525, Bishop Richard Foxe (1500–1528) added the side screens of the presbytery, which he also gave a wooden vault. With its progressive extensions, the east end is now about 110 feet (34 m) beyond that of Walkelin's building.
Important events which took place at Winchester Cathedral include:
Funeral of King Harthacanute (1042)
Funeral of King William II of England (1100)
Coronation of Henry the Young King and his queen, Marguerite (1172)
Second coronation of Richard I of England (1194)
Marriage of King Henry IV of England and Joanna of Navarre (1403)
Marriage of Queen Mary I of England and King Philip II of Spain (1554)
In the south transept there is a "Fishermen's Chapel", which is the burial place of Izaak Walton. Walton, who died in 1683, was the author of The Compleat Angler and a friend of John Donne. In the nave sanctuary is the bell from HMS Iron Duke, which was the flagship of Admiral John Jellicoe at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
A statue of Joan of Arc was erected when she was canonised as a saint by the Pope in 1923. The statue faces the Chancery Chapel of Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who condemned her to death by burning at the stake in Rouen in 1431.
The crypt, which frequently floods, houses a statue by Antony Gormley, called "Sound II", installed in 1986, and a modern shrine to Saint Swithun. The mysterious statue contemplates the water held in cupped hands. Gormley spoke of the connection of memories to basic elements of the physical world, "Is it possible to do this and make something fresh, like dew or frost – something that just is, as if its form had always been like this.’ There is also a bust of William Walker, the deep-sea diver who worked underwater in the crypt between 1906 and 1911 underpinning the nave and shoring up the walls.
St Swithun's memorial shrine with Fyodorov's iconostasis
A series of nine icons were installed between 1992 and 1996 in the retroquire screen which for a short time protected the relics of St Swithun destroyed by Henry VIII in 1538. These icons, influenced by the Russian Orthodox tradition, were created by Sergei Fyodorov and dedicated in 1997. They include the local religious figures St Swithun and St Birinus. Beneath the retroquire Icons, is the Holy Hole once used by pilgrims to crawl beneath and lie close to the healing shrine of St Swithun.
The cathedral's huge mediaeval stained glass West Window was deliberately smashed by Cromwell's forces following the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the broken glass was gathered up and assembled randomly, in a manner something like pique assiette mosaic work. There was no attempt to reconstruct the original pictures. Some surviving fragments are on display at the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology in Australia, including examples of the signature blue colour found only in Winchester stained glass. Out of necessity, the cathedral pre-empted collage art by hundreds of years.
The Epiphany Chapel has a series of Pre-Raphaelite stained glass windows designed by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones and made in William Morris's workshop. The foliage decoration above and below each pictorial panel is unmistakably William Morris and at least one of the figures bears a striking resemblance to Morris's wife Jane, who frequently posed for Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
The cathedral possesses the only diatonic ring of 14 church bells in the world, with a tenor (heaviest bell) weighing 1.81 tonnes (4,000 lb).[29] The back 12 were all cast by John Taylor & Co in 1937. They were augmented to a 14 when 2 new trebles and a 4#(sharp 4th) were added in 1992 by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry®. Also there is a 8b (flat 8th) which was cast by Anthony Bond in 1621
Nowadays the cathedral draws many tourists as a result of its association with Jane Austen, who died in Winchester on 18 July 1817. Her funeral was held in the cathedral and she was buried in the north aisle. The inscription on her tombstone makes no mention of her novels, but a later brass tablet describes her as "known to many by her writings".
Having spent three years in the city as a child, the novelist Anthony Trollope borrowed features of the cathedral and the city for his Chronicles of Barsetshire. In 2005, the building was used as a film set for The Da Vinci Code, with the north transept used as the Vatican. Following this, the cathedral hosted discussions and displays to debunk the book.
Winchester Cathedral is possibly the only cathedral to have had popular songs written about it. "Winchester Cathedral" was a UK top ten hit and a US number one song for The New Vaudeville Band in 1966. The cathedral was also the subject of the Crosby, Stills & Nash song, "Cathedral" from their 1977 album CSN. Liverpool-based band Clinic released an album titled Winchester Cathedral in 2004.
In 1992, the British rosarian David Austin introduced a white sport of his rose cultivar 'Mary Rose' (1983) as 'Winchester Cathedral'.