This wide-ranging study describes the natural environment of Winchester and its immediate surroundings from the late Iron Age to the early post-medieval period. Historical and archaeological evidence consider humanity's interactions with the environment, fashioning agricultural, gardening and horticultural regimes over a millennium and a half.

This is a detailed study of the archaeology of Roman Winchester—Venta Belgarum, a major town in the south of the province of Britannia— and its development from the regional (civitas) capital of the Iron Age people, the Belgae, who inhabited much of what is now central and southern Hampshire.

Winchester’s identity as a royal centre became well established between the ninth and twelfth centuries, closely tied to the significance of the religious communities who lived within and without the city walls. The reach of power of Winchester was felt throughout England and into the Continent through the relationships of the bishops, the power fluctuations of the Norman period, the pursuit of arts and history writing, the reach of the city’s saints, and more. The essays contained in this volume present early medieval Winchester not as a city alone, but a city emmeshed in wider political, social, and cultural movements and, in many cases, providing examples of authority and power that are representative of early medieval England as a whole.

By the fourteenth century Winchester had lost its former eminence, but in trades, manufactures, and population, as well as by virtue of its administrative and ecclesiastical role, the city was still one of the major provincial centres in England. This Survey is based on a reconstruction of the histories of the houses, plots, gardens, and fields in the city and suburbs between c. 1300 and c. 1540, although in many instances both earlier and later periods are also covered. The reconstruction takes the form of a gazetteer (Part ii) of 1,128 histories of properties, together with accounts of 56 parish churches and the international fair of St. Giles, all illustrated by detailed maps. There is also a biographical register (Part iii) concerning more than 8,000 property-holders, most of whom lived in Winchester. This is the first time that it has been possible to piece together such a precise and detailed picture of both the topography and the inhabitants of a medieval town. Part i of the book contains a full discussion of the significance of this material and, in a manner relevant to an understanding of life in medieval towns in general, describes and defines such matters as the evolution of the physical environment, housing, land-tenure, property values, the parochial structure, the practice and organization of trades, and the ways in which the citizens of Winchester adapted to the declining status of their city.

This critical assessment of the archaeology of the historic city of Winchester and its immediate environs from earliest times to the present day is the first published comprehensive review of the archaeological resource for the city, which as seen many major programmes of archaeological investigation.There is evidence for activity and occupation in the Winchester area from the Palaeolithic period onwards, but in the Middle Iron Age population rose sharply with settlement was focused on two major defended enclosures at St Catherine’s Hill and, subsequently, Oram’s Arbour. Winchester became a Roman ‘civitas’ capital in the late 1st century AD and the typical infrastructure of public buildings, streets and defences was created. Following a period of near desertion in the Early Anglo-Saxon period, Winchester became a significant place again with the foundation of a minster church in the mid-7th century. In the Late Anglo-Saxon period it became the pre-eminent royal centre for the Kingdom of Wessex. The city acquired a castle, cathedral and bishop’s palace under norman kings but from the late 12th century onwards its status began to decline to that of a regional market town. The archaeological resource for Winchester is very rich and is a resource of national and, for the Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods, of international importance.

St Swithun was an obscure ninth-century bishop of Winchester about whom little was, and is, known. But following the translation of his relics from a conspicuous tomb into the Old Minster, Winchester, on 15 July 971, the massive rebuilding of the cathedral, and a vigorous publicity campaign byBishop Aethelwold (963-84), St Swithun became one of the most popular and important English saints, whose cult was widespread not only in England but also in Ireland, Scandinavia, and France. The present volume includes new and full editions of all the relevant texts - hagiographical, liturgical,and historical - in Latin, Old English, and Middle English, many of which have never been published before: these illuminate the origins and development of St Swithun's cult. No dossier of an important English saint has been published on this scale until now: the wealth of this volume sheds newlight not only on St Swithun himself, but also on the times during which his cult was at the peak of its popularity.

A history of extensive archaeological excavations in Winchester from 1961 to 1970, showing how they led to the discovery of the Old and New Minsters and brought back to life the history, archaeology and architecture of the city’s greatest Anglo-Saxon buildings.