A postcard from the past

This is my entry for BobsBlips' WidWed challenge today.  I've chosed as the subject 'book title' Max Adams' brilliant 2013 history of 7th century Oswald of Northumbria, The King in the North.

So what, you might ask, has Oswald to do with Winchester?  Nothing of course.

However, there is a king who is very much associated with the north of Winchester, Alfred the Great, and as you may have guessed, I've recently become interested in the building and rebuilding of this part of the city.  It is, after all, very close to where I live.  But I will say that the stuff below in italics is written not as an obligatory history lesson for you, but as a diary entry for me, so please skip it if that's how the mood takes you.

The blip - yes, I have played with it a bit.  It's been cleaned up to remove street furniture, yellow parking lines and intrusive bits of 19th century building.  This is not to try and make it look like a genuinely old postcard (I've left in some modern guttering and the fake Victorian street lamp, after all), but to help re-imagine how it might have looked before it was surrounded by today's buildings.

The wall on the left of shot belongs to the only substantial part of Hyde Abbey left intact after Henry VIII's tantrum - the gatehouse between the inner and outer courts of the Abbey precincts.  Stones from the abbey were used to rebuild St Batholomew's Church (above).

The local pub, just down from the church, is - of course - The King Alfred ;))

Okay, that's more than enough from me.  Hope your day has been/is being a good one  xx



Originally, just outside the North Gate of the city (now no longer here) was a large Roman graveyard.  In the centre of the town (below the enormous encampment built by the Emperor Vespasian's soldiers in AD70-ish) was the Saxon Old Minster and next to it the Royal Palace.  The Old Minster was getting a touch small for all the people in Alfred's capital so he ordered a New Minster to be built alongside the Old.  It wasn't finished by the time he died, so he was buried in the Old Minster.  When the New one was complete he was dug up and reburied there.  150 years or so later, when William came along he wanted to rebuild in more lavish style.  So he ordered the New Minster to be moved (yes, really) out to Hyde, past the old Roman graveyard.  Alfred was dug up again and went with it.  This became Hyde Abbey.

The place where Alfred, his Queen and his son Edward the Elder were buried at Hyde Abbey (in front of the high altar) has been located by archeologists and local enthusiasts.  His body is not still there.  However, in recent years some people believe that a ?hip bone, ?ankle bone, dug up in an unmarked grave in this church, St Bartholomew's, belonged to Alfred.  No, I have no idea how they know.

So that's my 'King of the North'.