Winchester Cathedral Pilgrimage in a Day

Winchester Cathedral Pilgrimage in a Day – 6.5 miles – Hyde Abbey to Winchester Cathedral

Winchester is a place of formation – of the collegiate system of education that has lasted until this day, from Winchester College to Oxbridge; of England as one kingdom; and of the intent of countless pilgrims as they have prepared to walk to Canterbury or Southampton (for a boat to Santiago de Compostela).

Hyde Abbey

How do you establish your presence in Winchester before you start making pilgrimage to Canterbury? Start at Hyde Abbey, the place clouded in mystery where King Alfred is allegedly buried. What follows is an introduction to a circular day pilgrimage route of 6.5 miles around Winchester, which for the railway users among you can start and finish at its train station. 

St. Bartholomew's Church and St Lawrence's Church

The ceremonial start of your day is in a place of hidden ancient power at the former pilgrim stop-off of St Bartholomew’s Church on the site of Hyde Abbey, near where King Alfred the Great (the first King of the Anglo-Saxons who is claimed to have unified all England) is allegedly buried in Hyde Abbey Garden, marked by a stone slab a short walk down the road. This monastery was dissolved in the Reformation and all that is left now is the Gatehouse marking the boundary between its inner and outer precincts: the monks and ordinary people.

Set your day’s intention here - this could be either a question that you want answered in your life, or something that you want to bring in, or let go of. By the nearby bridge, perhaps filter water from the Hyde stream and sing our water song ‘water flows, source to sea, water flows, giving life to me’ or whatever you feel moved to, drink it, before heading to St Lawrence’s Church, built on the site of William the Conqueror’s palace chapel and is where Bishops put on their robes before being enthroned.

Tomb of Thomas Thetcher

From St Lawrence’s, walk past the tombstone of Thomas Thetcher, allegedly the inspiration for the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous due to his death from ‘a small beer’ (and who must have been a certain kind of Idler).

Winchester Cathedral

Then on to Winchester Cathedral in which are held so many treasures. These include, and not exhaustively: the Great West Window, a ‘polychromatic patchwork of mismatched colors and shapes’ salvaged and pieced together from all the shattered stained glass caused by the vandalism of the Roundheads after the Civil War; Jane Austen’s memorial; a Tournai font made of blue black limestone carved with St Nicholas stories; chests of bones of early monarchs; the ‘holy hole’; the Butterfly Bishop’s tomb; the crypt which may be flooded by the holy well around which the whole cathedral is built, with Gormley’s evocative sculpture rising from the water. Around the serene shrine of St Swithun gather your thoughts and mind yourselves of the intention you can initially set at St Bartholomew’s. 

The Pilgrim's School to St Swithun-upon-Kingsgate

Then leave the cathedral and head past the Pilgrim’s School, to St Swithun-upon-Kingsgate, a church built above one of the old town gates, and adopt silence for several minutes in its tranquility. If you are feeling idle you have, next door, one of the best pubs in England: the Wykeham Arms. But please do continue eventually, and amble past Winchester College (a place that is on the whole not known for its idling, but has some redeeming customs, more later, and is where the collegiate system of education was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382, based on monastic living), and along the River Itchen, one of the world’s prime chalk streams, through its cow-grazed meadows to the Hospital of St Cross, the oldest charitable institution in England, and home of the Wayfarer’s Dole, where for the past 900 years bread and ale have been offered to anyone, especially a pilgrim, who has asked. Perhaps lunch there too in their community-run Hall. This all takes care of food for the body, but to nourish your soul further, step into the majesty of the Hospital Church itself, with its metre-thick stone walls and miniature grandeur that mysteriously opens your spirit. Lie on the floor in the middle of the crossing and feel the result of all that sacred geometry in the architecture. 

Itchen Meadows and St Catherine's Hill

From the Hospital, you then walk out across the Itchen Meadows, stopping to play pooh sticks standing on the bridge over the river, perhaps letting your stick symbolise your intention being carried by the river, flowing away. Then it’s up the beautiful steps of St Catherine’s Hill to where you can circumambulate the hill along its Iron Age ramparts before heading to the hilltop wooded copse to stand on the site of a 12th-century chapel dedicated to St Catherine, one of the Church’s fourteen ‘holy helpers’ and a woman who defeated Emperor Maxentius’ top 50 male pagan philosophers in a long debate, but eventually was tortured and beheaded by him, after refusing his hand in marriage and miraculously surviving several attempts to end her life. (The other great St Catherine’s Hill in England is in Abbotsbury, Dorset).

The Mizmaze

And to activate your intention once again, you can walk the historic labyrinth called the ‘Mizmaze’ (probably 350 years old, possibly older), contemplating for the eight minutes or so as you walk the spiral journey of the soul. (Some people have smaller-scale labyrinths in their home which you can trace with your finger. See also https://labyrinthsinbritain.uk/)

Allegedly, the Knights Hospitaller who were not able to walk to Jerusalem would regularly walk this mizmaze in place of that longer pilgrimage. Perhaps in subconscious homage to this, all members of Winchester College ascend the hill once a year, and at the top each pupil’s name is read aloud, followed by prayers.

From the Mizmaze, descend the hill, passing through a portal of two trees on your way, and then walk up the river past the ruined Wolvesey Palace towards the oldest parish church in Winchester, St John the Baptist, perched on a steep slope above the former walls of the city, with beautifully-preserved medieval wall paintings. This would have been the last sacred stop for pilgrims before leaving the city to head along the Downs to Canterbury.

Alfred the Great

From here, you descend back down to the High Street, passing the very large statue of Alfred the Great, and then heading down Abbey Passage to approach the cathedral from the south east corner, past another stream of water, to then circumambulate the cathedral clockwise to enter it for the second time, this time with accumulated experience of the land in which it is situated. See how that changes your perception of the cathedral.

Stay for Evensong

If you want to experience the cathedral in all its glory, perhaps time your arrival to be there for the start of choral evensong, sung by a choir of girls, boys and adult ‘lay clerks’ (professional singers), a 45-minute service at the ‘even’-ing point between day and night (normally 5.30pm, but check), mainly consisting of music from Britain’s top composers of the past 500 years and some magisterial 16th-century english language without the need to believe anything yourself. And evensong is free of charge with no ticket booking required (donations encouraged, of course). Light a candle in gratitude for your day before you leave.

This article by Guy Hayward first appeared in the Mar-Apr 2024 issue of Idler Magazine.

A British Pilgrimage Trust route plotted by Will Parsons, with photos and Google Map waypoint descriptions by Guy Hayward, co-author of ‘Britain’s Pilgrim Places‘.

Buy your Cathedral Pilgrim Passport here.

When you visit Hyde Abbey Gate, the site of the old Winchester Gaol, listen to the song of Winchester Gaol:

‍

(Listen to the song on YouTube here.)