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Britain - Photo and History Pages SOUTHERN AND SOUTH WEST ENGLAND Paradoxplace BRITISH ABBEYS AND CATHEDRALS
Winchester Cathedral
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Winchester's pre-Henry VIII shrine (and Benedictine monastery) was dedicated to Saint Swithun (aka Swithin), a rather obscure local Saint who performed but one recorded miracle in his lifetime during the 800s - he restored an old woman's dropped basket of eggs. But he made up for this by the number of miracles which emanated from his shrine later, partly attributed to an access arrangement which allowed pilgrims to crawl through a tunnel under his relics.
On the night of 21 September 1538, the shrine was demolished by officers from Henry VIII's Commission for the Destruction of Shrines.
Link to Winchester Cathedral Website
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Winchester Cathedral has some mortuary chests containing (maybe) the assorted bones of early Wessex and English Kings including Egbert, Ethelwulf, Cnut and the Norman King William II (Rufus) - son of William the Conqueror, and a few bishops. They are perched on top of the stone screens on each side of the presbytery, rather like something you might put up in the attic to get it out of the way!
The Kings originally had their own tombs, but in the 1650s Cromwell's men, world class destroyers of churches, smashed them up and threw away the bony contents. Much later, in the late 1520s, bone fragments and other stuff collected by loyal citizens, were distributed amongst six mortuary chests, of which four originals remain (the other two are later replacements).
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Link to English Kings and Queens from AD 802 to the present, and their burial places
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Link to Winchester Cathedral Website
Link to photos of Winchester's misericords
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For other Paradoxplace pages visit the home page
All original material © Adrian Fletcher 2000-12 - The contents may not be hotlinked, or reproduced without permission.
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