Winchester Cathedral

The cathedral has many of these Chantries. These are small chapels in which some bishop or other wealthy, important person paid to have prayers said over them. A bit like a private church within a church for the deceased to get prayed into heaven.



Others are more conventionally buried in the floor and have carved stone markers.

The baptismal font is made of carboniferous limestone brought from Europe after the crusades. Another part of the church that is almost a millennium old.

More recently, we have the brass wall plaque to honor Jane Austen, who is buried here.

Her brother put up the brass to honor her writing since her grave marker only mentions her purity and faith, not that which made her famous.

There are place in the floor where you cannot help but walk over the deceased.

But the really special place is the crypt. It not a place for the dead...there is no one buried here. The water table fluctuates and, for a time each year, covers the floor of the crypt. Because there is no breeze or vibrations, the water looks like a poured acrylic, fixed in place. Out in the middle is a modern statue of a fellow who seems to be checking his cell phone. This is Antony Gormley’s mysterious life-size sculpture of a solitary man, Sound II, a man contemplating water held in his cupped hands. It is made of lead and cast from the sculptors body.

This is a serene and restful place.

All look down the aisle from the Norman section of the transept shows the floor littered with the stones telling of the dead beneath them.

Behind the altar is a quite large chantry of Henry Beaufort...

Bishop of Winchester 1404-47. Half-brother to Henry IV and three times Chancellor of England, Beaufort was the richest man in England, and on his death left part of his fortune to the Cathedral. The money was used to build the Great Screen and create a new shrine for St Swithun. You can see his imposing chapel alongside it.

After the reformation cause the destruction of the statues, these icons were installed to replace some of them.

St. Swithun, the local saint, was originally buried underneath the screen above and those seeking help from him would crawl in the small opening on their knees. Later, his body was moved to the fancy shrine seen below. One of his miracles involves the reassembly of broken eggs and thus, you see the stylized egg shells in the candle holders at the four corners of the shrine.

Here is another view of chantry of the Henry Beaufort.

In the quire, the parts that had any religious imagery were destroyed during the civil war, but the parts that are left are amazing. It is surprising that some parts are left in perfect shape while others are completely destroyed. Go figure.

The altar screen also lost all the statues. These are all Victorian replacements. Those Victorians put back what they though should be there, not what was originally there. Nevertheless, it is beautiful.