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Updated: April 30, 2025
The main portion of the structure as seen to-day was begun by Bishop Walkelin about 1079, and completed some fourteen years later. It is the longest of English churches, measuring externally 566 feet, and internally 562-1/2 feet, being a few feet longer than St.
The site of this Saxon church is considered to have been a little to the north of the present cathedral, which is a Norman building commenced by Walkelin a few years after the Conquest. St. Swithun is best known to-day in his capacity of weather prophet.
The great Norman church which Bishop Walkelin built to take the place of the Saxon minster cannot fundamentally have differed very much from the church we see, at any rate so far as its nave and transepts were concerned. The eastern arm was, however, different.
This church, which, like its successor until the Reformation, was served by monks, stood till the year 1093, when it was destroyed as useless, for the new Norman church of Bishop Walkelin begun in 1079 was then far enough advanced to be used. It is thus practically certain that the two churches did not stand on the same site, the newer, it would seem, rising to the south of the older building.
The tower at the intersection of the transepts is the second of its kind, the first, built by Walkelin, having fallen in 1107, owing, says tradition, to the wicked Red King having been buried beneath it. Of its rebuilding there are no records.
The transepts remain to us still, but the nave was transformed, in the very beginning of the Perpendicular time. It was transformed not rebuilt. Bishop William of Wykeham has obliterated Bishop Walkelin, but fundamentally the nave of Winchester remains Norman still.
There the great Fair of St Giles was established by the Conqueror, which attracted merchants from every part of Europe, and there in 1079 Bishop Walkelin began, from the foundations, a new cathedral church completed in 1093, of which the mighty transepts still remain.
William Peverel, Ralph Lovel, and Robert of Lincoln, William Fitz John, William of Mohun, Ralph Paganel, and William Fitz Alan, are mentioned by name as holding castles against the king, besides a son of Robert's and Geoffrey Talbot who were at Bristol, and Walkelin Maminot who held Dover. The movement was confined to the southwest, but as a beginning it was not to be neglected.
One monastery passed on the new fashion to another, as Simeon, at Ely, came fresh from the great work being carried on at Winchester under his brother Walkelin. It is not claimed for Bishop Eustace that his work here is the earliest known specimen of the style finished in so perfect a form. At Lincoln the choir was erected in the time of Bishop Hugh, who died in 1200.
Elphege in the eleventh century, and an arm of this patron saint of Winchester was one of the most treasured possessions of Peterborough. What remained of these much-disturbed relics were re-translated by Bishop Walkelin from the old to the new cathedral, but in 1241 the shrine was broken by the vane of the tower falling through the roof.
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