Winchester: A City of Two Planned Towns

Abstract

The principal streets within the walls of Winchester form today an ancient and orderly pattern. There are four elements. The spine is High Street running downhill from West Gate to East Gate, and beyond to the bridge across the River Itchen. Back streets run close behind and parallel to High Street on either side. North–south streets run at right-angles from High Street out to the line of the city walls. To north and south their ends are linked by a street which ran, and in part still does run, around the inside of the city walls. This elegant and logical system is first displayed on John Speed’s map of Winchester, published in 1611 (Fig. 2.1).1 In the 1870s the Ordnance Survey mapped the city at the scale of 1:500, the sheets of which were published at this and reduced scales in the following years. The sight of the surveyors at work and the meticulous accuracy and extraordinary detail of their published sheets can only have increased interest in the historical topography of the city. In 1890 the then Dean of Winchester, G.W. Kitchin, while reasonably cautious about the nature of Venta Belgarum, Roman Winchester, published a detailed “Map of Norman Winchester, a.d. 1119,” which he based on the Winton Domesday, a written survey drawn up about 1110 which he now set in the context of the mapped city (Fig. 2.2).2 There are many points of detail which later work would correct, but it was a pioneering attempt. So too was Francis Haverfield’s account of “Winchester—Venta Belgarum,” published in 1900 with for the first time a plan of Winchester “showing Roman remains.” This has the approach roads from north, west, and south (but not the east) and shows the Roman city wall in red, but otherwise only individual