The Thirteenth-Century Shrine and Screen of St Swithun at Winchester

Abstract

AbstractA collection of thirteenth-century sculptural fragments in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral, recently identified as possibly deriving from a screen associated with the shrine of St Swithun, is shown in this paper to have been excavated from the foundations of a flight of stairs just outside the Cathedral in 1907–8. Other fragments, which in 1924 formed the basis of a hypothetical reconstruction of the shrine itself, may have been discovered at the same time. The subsequent movements of the material are charted and the importance of the ‘feretory’ as a repository for miscellaneous sculptural pieces is discussed.It was recognised in 1907 that the date of the structure under which the screen fragments were discovered was significant. Good documentary evidence, backed up by archaeological evidence, shows the stairs to have been constructed in 1694, replacing an earlier, probably wooden, structure. The possibility that the screen fragments were used in an earlier reconstruction of the stairs is discus...