St Catherine's Hill Chapel (ruin), Winchester

Mizmazes offer an ancient form of devotional walking ritual, and this site is also visited by a one-day pilgrimage to the nearby cathedral

Early Christians considered landscape features to be spiritually significant, as this holy site demonstrates. A chapel of St Catherine was built on top of this steep hill, which overlooks the city of Winchester. Other chapels dedicated to this legendary Roman-era saint can be found on hilltops and mountains throughout the Christian world.

Highlights

• St Catherine’s Chapel (ruins)
• Medieval labyrinth

The chapel is now a complete ruin, a few stones visible beside a mound. The views over Winchester are superb however, and there is also an ancient mizmaze alongside. Both help to justify the steep climb.The mizmaze is a curious survivor from medieval or perhaps even older traditions. It is a labyrinthine path cut in the turf – not a true maze as there is only one route to follow.

Winchester’s mizmaze is marked out by a groove filled with stones and pebbles. We don’t know when or why these were built, and only eight survive in England. Winchester’s example is set into a square with sides about 28m long, in which the line meanders around before returning beside the entrance.

Some speculate that mizmazes were a sort of land art experience designed to mimic the journey of the soul through life. Vague though that sounds, it is the best explanation currently on offer.

St Catherine’s patronage of chapels on hills and mountains has more a more concrete explanation. It apparently stems from the fact that the world’s oldest monastery, on Mount Sinai, is dedicated to her. A bush growing in its garden is said to be the original burning bush which Moses encountered. She was perhaps martyred in the 4th century for defying the Roman gods, which also makes her a suitable patron for places converted from pagan to Christian use.

And so perhaps the hill and its mizmaze were originally of unknown pagan significance, brought into line at the conversion of the English by the presence of St Catherine.

Directions

Car Park on: Garnier Road, Winchester SO23 9PA

Parking

W3W: dries.sprint.fumes

GPS: 51.0498N 1.3110W

Maze

W3W: growl.traps.spill

GPS: 51.0466N 1:3098W

To reach the foot of St Catherine’s Hill, head out of Winchester along Garnier Road, off Kingsgate Road to the south of the cathedral. The car park is on the right after 700m, just before a brick railway bridge. Walk up the hill from the far corner of the car park. The scant remains of the chapel (dark grey stones on a patch of raised earth) are in the woodland on the summit. The mizmaze is located 10m outside this woodland, on the left as you approach the hilltop from the car park. The walk is steep, about 400m in total.