A Walk around Winchester

The Whole Day Through is the first novel of mine set in Winchester, but anyone who knows my work and knows Winchester will have recognised a thinly veiled version of King Alfred’s ancient capital in my previous novels, Facing the Tank, Tree Surgery for Beginners and Friendly Fire. Although I now live in deepest Cornwall, I’m a Hampshire Hog, born on the Isle of Wight and raised in Winchester. I left for university in 1980 but still think of Winchester as my home town. A short train ride from London Waterloo, Winchester makes for an excellent day out and the following route from the station will let you take in many of the locations drawn on in The Whole Day Through while enjoying the historic beauties of the city.

Emerging from the station, turn right, following the footpath along the top of the railway embankment and right again over the dizzyingly high railway bridge. Turn left at the other side and cross the road. You’re now at the foot of Oram’s Arbour, the site of an ancient encampment and where Ben takes the phone call from Chloë and, later, dawdles to watch children playing rounders. His and Bobby’s house is down in Fulflood, across the Arbour to your right. Cross the grass on the diagonal path — you’ll find a splendid view of the city spread out below you as you climb. Face away from the view and continue to the left at the top of the Arbour. Number 5 Clifton Road, the first of the two houses with very steep gables, was our first house in Winchester, where we lived when I was a choirboy. Walk past the front of the house and down Clifton Road to the junction with Romsey Road. Up the hill to your right lies the hospital where Ben works — worth a detour if you’re a fan of the polychrome buildings of Butterworth — and the prison where Hardy’s Tess was hanged. If these don’t tempt you, cross the road and continue along the pedestrianised delights of St James Terrace, where our lovers each walk in the book’s final chapters. Across the railway cutting to your left is what was the Royal Green Jackets’ barracks.

At the end of St James Terrace turn left down the hill and almost immediately on your right you’ll see the corner house that was the model for Professor Jellicoe’s naturist hideaway in the novel. As you can see I took tremendous liberties with the truth, but I hope you can see why the original house has always intrigued me. Carry on down St James Lane. You’re now entering the area of the city dominated by my old school, Winchester College. You can see the magnificent bell tower rising out of the oldest part of the College straight ahead of you, but the school has grown so since its original foundation that many of the houses in this part of town are now part of it.

Cross Southgate Street, then continue directly down the hill by Canon Street. At the end of the street turn left then immediately right and continue along College Street, pausing, naturally, to browse in P. & G. Wells the Bookseller. A little way past Wells you’ll find a pink house on your right where Jane Austen breathed her last. Her grave in the nearby cathedral mentions her Christian virtues and ‘the extraordinary endowment of her mind’ but avoids that tainted word novelist…

A minute’s more walking brings you to the College’s gatehouse and it’s well worth taking one of the guided tours here. If you have an hour to spare, you can now visit the watermeadows and St Cross by carrying on along College Street, following the old red-brick wall that encloses the warden’s garden. Where the wall turns sharply to the right you’ll have a view to your left of elegant Wolvesey Palace, home of the bishop, and the vast ruins — now enclosing choir school playing fields — of the medieval palace it replaced. A part of the ruins is usually open to the public. Continue along the warden’s wall, turning right and right again, to where the pavement brings you alongside the College’s 1960s concert hall. The way into the College from this side is barred to you but you take a footpath to your left, alongside the river.

Winchester is a watery city and once had a network of brooks and streams usefully cutting across it. Most of these have long since been channelled underground, leaving only street names to show where they run, but on this side of the city all the way out to the hospital at St Cross, water rules and you’ll walk through scenery typical of Hampshire’s south — water meadows rich in trout, herons and other wildlife. The footpath leads you alongside some of the College’s playing fields.

The path crosses Garnier Road by the old pumping station and winds on, past moist gardens and allotments, to another stretch of water meadows beyond a kissing gate. Beyond you now lies St Cross Hospital. Well worth a visit for the partly Norman church (where Ben and Bobby attend Shirley’s memorial service) and the lovely complex of old buildings surrounding it. You can spot the permanent residents by the red or black robes they’re supposed to wear at all times. Traditionally any visitor can claim the Traveller’s Dole — a chunk of bread and a glass of beer served free at the gate — but last time I checked this had been replaced by less frugal, non-charitable refreshments served in the outer courtyard.

At the end of your visit, walk almost straight ahead out of the outer gate, around a white fire barrier and on to Back Street. This will lead you past some delightful old houses, including a half-timbered one on a right-hand corner said to be one of the oldest in the city, past St Faith’s Primary School (where I imagined Ben and Bobby’s mother worked) and out on to Kingsgate Road. This seamlessly becomes Kingsgate Street, which you follow for its entire length. As the road progresses you’ll see the cathedral’s nave looming up ahead like a stone battleship. If you feel in need of sustenance, lunch can be found at the Queen’s Head, which has a pleasant garden, or the extremely atmospheric and much older Wykeham Arms.

From the Wykeham Arms pass directly beneath the old gateway ahead of you. This houses St Swithun’s, one of the city’s tiniest but most atmospheric churches, reached by a steep flight of stairs. Turning right then brings you through the fifteenth-century Prior’s Gate into the cathedral close and up against some of the oldest domestic buildings in it, including the Prior’s Lodge. Just around the corner to the right lies Pilgrims’ School, which educates the choristers for the cathedral and the quiristers for the College. To the left of the school’s front door stands the Pilgrims’ Hall, all that remains of the old medieval priory’s guesthouse, well worth a peek if it’s unlocked, for one of the earliest examples of a hammer-beam roof in the country.

Following the road on through the close will bring you past the handsome deanery, much improved for one of Charles II’s visits. Beyond that, keeping to the right, you will come to the Gothic arches that are all that remain of the eleventh-century chapter house. If it’s a sunny day, slip through here to visit Dean Garnier’s garden, which grants magnificent views of the cathedral exterior, as does the well-concealed path you can pick up by passing through the broad tunnel known as the Slype just beyond it.

Please don’t follow Professor Jellicoe’s disgraceful example by trying to slip in through the secure door in the Slype’s middle — the code I give in the book is NOT the right one! Rather, retrace your steps and walk under the long line of flying buttresses along the cathedral nave and enter through the west end. This may be the tourists’ entrance but it also confronts you with one of the most dramatic interior views the country can offer.

Leaving the cathedral by the way you came in, follow the lime avenue out of the close to The Square. Here you’ll find one of the city’s well-kept architectural secrets, the sister church to St Swithun’s — St Lawrence-in-the-Square. Once a chapel royal for Norman kings, it’s now principally a fifteenth-century building, crammed with earlier details, which charms for the Narnian fashion in which it seems to open out from a cupboard-like entrance between adjoining shops.

To return to the station, turn right as you come out of St Lawrence’s, pause to admire the pinnacled splendour of the fifteenthcentury Butter Cross, then head up the high street, past Elizabeth Frink’s fetching horse and rider, as far as the Westgate, then cross the road beyond County Hall and its bronze hog and follow Station Road. The curious who still have the energy can visit the little Westgate Museum, then turn left to visit the splendid Great Hall and the long-since disproved Arthurian Round Table…

PS: In the time that has elapsed between writing this piece and its appearance on Fifth Estate, the author has since discovered that Jane Austen’s house, which was painted pink throughout his childhood and teenage years, has suddenly turned yellow.

The Whole Day Through is the Book at Bedtime all this week on Radio 4, read by Samantha Bond and Nathanial Parker. Tune in tonight, August 10th, at 10.45pm or you can listen again from tomorrow on BBC i-Player.