Winchester Cathedral Christmas Market has become something of a habit in this household and we were all very sad not to be able to go last year, so the moment it was announced that it was (probably) definitely going ahead in 2021, it went in our calendars. It’s pretty consistently marked as one of the top ten best Christmas markets in the UK and you can pop into one of England’s great Norman/Gothic cathedrals while you’re there. The market takes place in the customary little wooden huts in the cathedral grounds.
I love Winchester. I love its place in history. I love the cathedral. I’ve looked into the possibility of living in Winchester but it’s so far out of my budget that Rightmove won’t even show me properties there, asking “wouldn’t Southampton suit you better? Or Eastleigh? Eastleigh’s more your style, you know”. So if there’s a Christmas market to be done, it’s going to be Winchester.
It’s held in the cathedral grounds. We start on the Broadway, either by getting off the park & ride bus or by walking in from the car park – no park & ride for us this year, thank you – near the statue of King Alfred the Great. We walk down Abbey Passage, between the Guildhall and the Abbey Gardens, turn right then left onto Colebrook Street and the little lane that comes into the East End of the cathedral. This is where the little chalets start and this year, it’s where the toilet-sheds are.
This first part is on the Chapter House Lawn, a little bit of garden in the summer, hemmed in by the East End, the south transept, the cathedral admin buildings and a kind of wall that’s just top, bottom and pillars. They cover the ground in plastic plates so it doesn’t get churned to mud and they build a little bridge-staircase through the wall. The first chalet is usually a nativity scene. Once it had live sheep but now it’s just a wooden scene with seats so you can have your photo taken with it.
There’s no real difference between the chalets here and the ones in the Inner Close, it’s just where they happened to end up. There’s jewellery, fused glass, art, great wooden sculptures by the bridge – it’s just a microcosm of the main market.
My mum recently had her ears repierced after several decades of not wearing earrings so she zoomed straight in on the first jewellery stall she saw. I think it’s StudioZo, which is a local small business that makes fused glass homewares and decorations and also some jewellery. One pair of teeny-tiny Swarovski Christmas tree earrings! They’re actually really cute and I kind of covet them.
We lingered by the wooden sculptures and then it was time to hop and up and over the bridge into the Inner Close. Normally you’d have stalls along both sides, encircling the green in the middle, which would be covered with an ice rink and bar. This year, to spread things out a bit, the chalets are only on one side.
“There’s a lot of jewellery here”, Mum says, not regretting her impulse purchase but starting to wonder what else she could buy. A bobbing robin, perhaps, or a wobbly Santa. This is the kind of Christmas stuff I loathe but she loves them more and more every year.
At the bottom, there’s usually a food court and it’s some consternation to find it’s not here, even though I’ve looked on the website and know our favourite food place is attending the market this year. But the glorious mulled wine stand is there, with its usual gleaming copper vat of wine, its brass and polish and lights.
Also along the left-hand side are two stalls of similar spectacle roasting chestnuts. I don’t eat nuts but I love the smell of them. I used to live in Switzerland and they were roasted on the streets of Neuchâtel all year round. Last time I was here, there was a little brazier and you could buy a skewer and some marshmallows and toast them right there. Not here this year.
Luckily, the stalls along this edge of the green are the usual ones. There’s the pretty blue and white spotty Polish crockery, the extra-strong gardening tools, the pop-art, the clothes, the candles.
Then there’s an unexpected entrance and we get confirmation that the ice rink definitely isn’t there, not even in miniature format. Instead, the entire centre is a surprisingly open and airy foodcourt, with benches and seats in the middle, the usual food places down one side and anything else that does food pretty much down the other side.
It’s a bit early for lunch so we go back out and carry on round. On the corner, there’s usually a proper little chalet that you can go in and walk around and buy decorations. I bought a little glass square present to hang on the tree from here a few years ago. You’ll see in a couple of weeks just how overcrowded our tree is now so we don’t buy anything but it’s good to see the stall is there.
Now we’re on the last bit, the stuff along the side of the cathedral. In the corner, as usual, is the chalet with the orange and cinnamon decorations. Pomanders? Well, you know. Wreathes made of dried oranges and cinnamon. It smells amazing. There’s the felt hats and the wooden puzzles and my mum invests in a “Santa hat” because she doesn’t have enough winter hats. It’s just a bobble hat but it’s red, with a big white bobble and a white brim. We’ve now basically made a circle of the Inner Close and we’re back at the bridge into the Chapter House Lawn.
We turn around and head for the Outer Close, which is the bit out the front, or West End, of the cathedral. It’s always been a one way system because you have to thread your way through the buttresses here and it’s chaos at the best of times. But there’s nothing out the front except another glorious copper-and-brass steampunk mulled wine stall, except this one also does churros. We knew things were more spread out this year but it appears they’ve achieved this by not having two-thirds of the stalls. If you’ve been before, this year is definitely a “is that it? Where’s the rest?”
I want to do some ordinary shopping so I walk up to the bookshop and cause some small consternation by investing in a Croatia guidebook and a Czech phrasebook. The bookseller doesn’t actually want to insult me by asking if I realise they don’t speak Czech in Croatia but he does make a comment and have a little chat to imply it to me. I know. It’s two different trips and you didn’t have a Czech guidebook. Two different trips that might well not happen. I also pop into Boots for a hair mask because my hair feels like straw lately and no amount of conditioner seems to be helping. Then we stroll back down the high street and take a turning back into the cathedral grounds where I’m entranced by the sight of three pigeons having a bath in a muddy puddle. I really like pigeons.
And then it’s back into the market.
We traditionally buy Kohler Kusse – they’re a bit like a marshmallow tea cake except they’re some three inches high, with a sort of wafer base and a chocolate coating and marshmallow on the inside. They’re ok if you buy a box of twelve. If you buy just one, it will collapse and get squashed in the bag before you get it home and you’ll have to eat it by licking the inside of the bag. They’re not here this year. The website says the Brownies and Hot Chocolate stall has them but they don’t. They do have some excellent brownies, though. I had a Nutella one. Recommended.
Yes, now it’s lunchtime. My mum loves her Austrian Christmas markets so she has a bratwurst from the Bratwurst Chalet, but she’s British with a palate shaped by the rationing that ended before she was born, so she doesn’t have anything on it.
My dad opts for a toastie. Normally I’d join him but it’s still a bit early and although I’m hungry, my insides just aren’t ready for a toastie. It’s from the Gourmet Grilled Cheese Company which is a long-standing favourite. I think it’s specifically the Classic, which is local strong Cheddar with spring onions and a gherkin, on artisan sourdough bread. I’d have the Straight Cheese which is just cheese.
Naturally, I want to go in the cathedral but it’s not open until after 1pm, when a school service finishes. We’ve still got an hour or so and we decide that the best thing to do is amble down the City Mill, which is a National Trust place – it’s actually free entry so it doesn’t matter that all three of us are NT members. It’s a water mill which mills its own flour to this day, although not as much now as it used to. You can go down underneath and watch the wheel, you can see most of the workings of the wheel and see it milling on the days when it’s doing it – not the day we were there – and there are otters that play in the river underneath. They only come out at night but they get spotted on the live camera feed so if you want to see them, the best place to look is on their Twitter, where they post video clips.
That takes long enough that the cathedral is open to the public again by the time we amble back. Did I mention that I love the cathedral? I admit there are issues with having to pay for access to some of the country’s great religious centres but on the other hand, this cathedral is 942 years old in places and it requires some maintenance, which is expensive. Ready for this? It’s £9.95 to go in. However, that’s not strictly for a “ticket”, it’s for an “annual pass”. I could linger here for hours but my parents don’t want to go in or pay to go in so they’re sitting outside, so I have to be reasonably quick. Quick recap: Winchester Cathedral is the longest medieval cathedral in the world, it has the longest nave in Europe, it started as a Norman edifice in 1079 and Bishop Edington started knocking it down and rebuilding it in Perpendicular Gothic style in 1346. The money ran out at the transepts, which are the original Norman ones. I love how badly they matched up the Gothic bits with the Norman bits but I guess they didn’t worry too much about it being too accurate as they planned to knock the old bits down and rebuild them.
I have to go back soon. I wanted to do the Christmas rooftop tower tour but it’s not until 3.30 in the afternoon and my mum wasn’t going to hang around Winchester for another three and a half hours. So I’ll spend a while getting my fill of the cathedral with my annual pass, do the tour, get a toastie and maybe even do some unsupervised shopping. I’ve looked at the dates when the tour is happening – not every day by a long way – and there’s only one that’s really practical for me to do. Will I do a blog about the Christmas tower tour? Maybe. Probably not. I don’t really have space in my schedule, believe it or not. How long have I been complaining about lack of blogging material? Am I doing three posts a week in December? How do I still not have anywhere to put it?
Anyway, I had a quick skip around my beloved cathedral and then departed. Oh – there was one more important thing. I went into Chococo. I really like Chococo. It’s a local chocolatier and I always get a bag of chocolate dinosaurs and pirate coins when I go to the chocolate house in Swanage. The Winchester place? Oh, they do chocolate King Alfreds! Our Alf used Winchester as his capital and was buried in the Old Minster and later moved to Hyde Abbey, the remains of which are now in the north-east of the city. Alf’s current resting place is a bit more vague. So I got myself a couple of chocolate Alfs, a couple of dinosaurs and a couple of robots. I’m not such a fan of the robots, it turns out. Stick to the Alfs, the dinosaurs and the coins.
And that was it. It was time to go back to the car.