Britains Great Cathedrals_6of6_Winchester Cathedral
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00:00Britain's cathedrals, majestic, magnificent, monumental.
00:07For more than 1400 years,
00:09they've dominated Britain's landscape.
00:12Never out of sight, never out of mind.
00:15Epic structures, they represent our history
00:19and the changing fortunes of a nation.
00:23I'm Tony Robinson, and in this series,
00:25I'll be exploring six of Britain's greatest cathedrals.
00:34What a privilege.
00:35Their stories of rivalry and royalty.
00:39Henry was determined to strip the church of its power.
00:45Of struggles and sacrifice.
00:47Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?
00:51Of martyrs and murder.
00:54And then they just hacked him down right on the spot.
00:58Containing more than 1,000 years of history,
01:01I'll discover how these buildings were constructed.
01:05Isn't that extraordinary?
01:06How they've evolved and what secrets they hold.
01:16♪♪
01:21Winchester Cathedral.
01:25The longest medieval church in Britain.
01:29For centuries, Winchester was the home
01:31for royalty in England.
01:35Kings and queens have been christened,
01:37married, and laid to rest here.
01:43Its bishops were the wealthiest
01:45and most powerful men in the country.
01:50And over its lifetime,
01:51it's been attacked and nearly destroyed.
01:58But this cathedral's a survivor.
02:01140 foot tall,
02:04it's built in the traditional shape of a cross.
02:09At the end of its elongated nave
02:12and at the heart of the structure is the altar.
02:17With chapels around the outside.
02:22♪♪
02:26Today, it's one of the most visited cathedrals in the country.
02:31And it's never busier than in winter,
02:33when around half a million shoppers descend
02:36to visit the German Christmas market in its grounds,
02:40where they spend their cash on local produce
02:43and arts and crafts.
02:47And if you look closely at some of that cash,
02:49you'll find a link with the cathedral,
02:51because there is a tiny image of it just there.
02:55And next to it, on the £10 note,
02:58a larger image of one of Britain's most famous novelists.
03:03The wonderful Jane Austen, who's buried in the cathedral.
03:10Austen was a phenomenally successful writer
03:13whose books have sold in their millions,
03:16been translated into over 40 languages
03:19and filmed countless times.
03:22Two centuries after her death,
03:25titles such as Pride and Prejudice...
03:29..Sense and Sensibility...
03:33..and Emma...
03:36..are as popular as ever.
03:38Apart from the Queen and the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry,
03:43Jane Austen is the only woman ever to have appeared
03:46on an English banknote.
03:48And the fact that it's a tenner has great significance,
03:51because £10 is the amount that her publisher paid her
03:55for her first novel.
04:00Jane Austen's success grew as more novels were released.
04:06But in May 1817, a serious illness brought her writing career
04:11to an abrupt end.
04:14She moved here to Winchester to get medical assistance.
04:17That's the little house that she lived in.
04:21But the treatment didn't work, and two months later,
04:24she died, aged just 41.
04:31She was buried in Winchester Cathedral,
04:34a place she'd always admired.
04:37But her burial was a modest affair.
04:39There were only four people at her funeral,
04:42which took place early in the morning before services began.
04:46A modest send-off for a woman who I, and many other people,
04:50think was Britain's greatest female novelist.
04:54Her body now lies beneath the North Isle of the Nave.
04:59Although Jane was successful in her lifetime,
05:02and indeed counted George IV among the first to be buried here,
05:07and indeed counted George IV among her fans,
05:10it wasn't until after she died
05:13that her popularity spread far and wide.
05:17And in 1870, a brass plaque was put up in memory of her.
05:26Jane Austen is probably the most famous person
05:29to be buried in Winchester Cathedral,
05:32but there are hundreds of others, including royalty.
05:37Inside these caskets lie the bones
05:40of some of the first kings in England.
05:46And that's because Winchester was once the capital of England
05:49and home to its monarchs.
05:54The cathedral was built in the very centre of the city,
05:58but not the building we see here today.
06:02The original cathedral was a simple building
06:05made of stone and wood.
06:11These bricks outline the site of the first cathedral,
06:15known as the Old Minster, which was built here in 648 AD.
06:20It housed the body of one of the most famous
06:23of all the Anglo-Saxon kings, Alfred the Great.
06:32He was known as the Great in part
06:34because he defeated the Vikings in 878
06:37at the Battle of Eddington,
06:39stopping their conquest of Britain in its tracks.
06:4521 years later, when Alfred died,
06:48he probably thought the country was safe.
06:53But less than two centuries later,
06:56once again, it came under attack
06:58in a brutal invasion that would change England,
07:02the capital Winchester, and its cathedral forever.
07:14Winchester Cathedral.
07:17This stone giant is one of the oldest cathedrals in the UK.
07:23At 551 feet, it's twice the length of a jumbo jet
07:28and double the height.
07:33It stands in the heart of Winchester City,
07:35at one time the capital of England.
07:40But the origins of the building that stands here today
07:44lie across the English Channel in France.
07:49In September 1066,
07:52William the Duke of Normandy invaded England.
07:55He defeated King Harrod II at the Battle of Hastings.
08:06And on a Christmas day,
08:07was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.
08:15Four years later, William was crowned again,
08:17this time here at Winchester,
08:20England's then capital by ambassadors of the Pope.
08:23This was a clear sign
08:25that the church recognized William's claim to the throne
08:29and that the Pope approved of him seizing it by force.
08:35Under William's instructions,
08:37the Normans began building imposing cathedrals
08:40and castles all over the country,
08:43the likes of which had never been seen before.
08:48In Winchester, the old cathedral was replaced
08:51with a new one.
08:54The construction of this new cathedral
08:57fell to the city's first Norman bishop,
09:00known simply as Walklyn.
09:03Along with stone, he needed huge quantities of wood
09:07to build the cathedral's roof.
09:13It's claimed that the new king made the bishop an offer.
09:17He said, go into my royal forest,
09:20take all the wood that you can get
09:22in four days and four nights,
09:25and you can have it for free.
09:27And the bishop took full advantage of the offer.
09:30He got all the people of Winchester to go to the forest,
09:33chopped down all the trees,
09:35and in four days and four nights,
09:37they'd taken every one,
09:39which gave the new king a bit of a problem.
09:42Where was he going to do his hunting?
09:45He needed to create a new forest.
09:48So he did, and he called it the New Forest.
09:53Freshly cut timbers used to build the massive roof,
09:58supported by tiers of round arches.
10:04This Norman style hadn't been seen in a British cathedral
10:08before William the Conqueror took the throne
10:10from the Anglo-Saxons.
10:14As well as getting rid of the Anglo-Saxon cathedrals
10:17and putting up these brand-new Norman ones instead,
10:21he also wanted to oust the old Anglo-Saxon elite
10:25and replace them with his own friends and family.
10:29This was going to be the swiftest,
10:32most efficient substitution of one ruling class
10:35by another in English history.
10:38They took the land, replaced the aristocracy,
10:41imposed their own language,
10:43took over the government and the church.
10:45Job done.
10:47The new Norman cathedral that we see in Winchester today
10:51was finished in 1093.
10:55The Norman builders also constructed a monastery
10:58next door to the cathedral, dedicated to a famous saint.
11:04St. Swithun was an Anglo-Saxon bishop
11:07who had served in Winchester in the 9th century.
11:11Although he was known for his work with the poor
11:14during his life, it wasn't until after his death
11:17that he achieved widespread fame.
11:21Pilgrims travelled from far and wide
11:24to get close to his tomb, and when they got here,
11:27they followed an age-old tradition of penance.
11:31St. Swithun's bones were placed up there
11:34at the east end of the cathedral.
11:37And in the Middle Ages, if you wanted to have a look at them,
11:41then you had to crawl up on your hands and knees.
11:45But folklore had it that if, when you got to the top,
11:48you arrived on your right knee, then you would go to heaven.
11:51If you arrived on your left knee,
11:54well, you can guess where you ended up then.
11:58After that, they would crawl into that little hole there
12:02because St. Swithun's bones were up there
12:05and they wanted to get as close to them as possible
12:07because they were afraid of the danger
12:09and they wanted to get as close to them as possible
12:12because they were thought to cure illness.
12:16Although I think they'd have had to do it one at a time.
12:22The cathedral was run by monks
12:25who lived in the monastery next door.
12:28It's no longer here today, but this is where the monastery's
12:31dormitories, kitchens and great dining room used to stand.
12:36But there's something very interesting that's still here,
12:40a secret tunnel running underneath the ground
12:43next to the old monastery.
12:46Today it's been blocked up,
12:48but I'm about to find out what it was used for.
12:52John, where are we now?
12:54Well, we're down in the monastic necessarium.
12:57What does that mean?
12:58The necessarium was the necessary place, it was a monastic loose.
13:00But if you were here in the Middle Ages and you looked up
13:03at certain times of day, what you would see
13:06would be a line of 26 monastic bottoms.
13:09A vivid image. Thank you for sharing that with me.
13:12Have we any idea when this was built?
13:15Yes, because the kind of stone which is used is the core limestone
13:19from the Isle of Wight, which is typical of the very first phase
13:23of building the cathedral.
13:24So this is 11th century?
13:26This is one of the first things that was put in.
13:31When I think of the cathedral itself, it's all shooting up in the air,
13:35it's all to the glory of God.
13:37Down here, it's sheer practicality.
13:40And the engineers and the builders that produced this place
13:42were entirely hard-headed and very good engineers.
13:45One would almost say as good as many engineers today.
13:50The Norman engineers were such skilled craftsmen
13:53that this is one of the earliest surviving medieval sewers in Britain.
13:57William the Conqueror built his imposing castles and cathedrals
14:02to project power and to quell rebellion.
14:07But the Norman bishops who were put in charge of these cathedrals
14:11soon became potential rivals to the king.
14:15The bishops owned vast amounts of land and they wielded huge power.
14:21And some of them were very happy to oblige.
14:24The bishops here at Winchester were some of the richest,
14:27most influential and most badly behaved of the lot.
14:33Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester from 1129
14:37and grandson of William the Conqueror, was a prime example.
14:45Bishop Henry was incredibly rich.
14:47He was a man of many talents.
14:50Bishop Henry was incredibly rich
14:53and he built his very own opulent palace right here,
14:56next to Winchester Cathedral.
15:01He also built a second palace to live in when he visited London,
15:06on what's now the south bank of the Thames in Southwark.
15:10In the 12th century, the streets around Bishop Henry's London Palace
15:15were notorious for their rowdy taverns and brothels.
15:20And despite being a holy man, he saw an opportunity to make money.
15:27He taxed the prostitutes working in the brothels outside his palace.
15:32And although they were in London, they became known as his Winchester geese.
15:38Being allowed to tax the prostitutes on their income
15:42made the bishop the second richest man in England.
15:45Only his older brother, Stephen, the King of England, was wealthier.
15:50As a result, Bishop Henry enjoyed the fine things in life.
15:56And whereas today a rich man might splash out on fast cars,
16:00back then the thing to spend your money on was Bibles.
16:05In the year 1160, Bishop Henry paid for this one.
16:10It's called the Winchester Bible.
16:13It's one of the largest and finest Bibles ever produced in England
16:17and it was made right here.
16:20It's one of the greatest treasures of the cathedral.
16:25The 1,000 pages are made of the skin of 250 carves
16:29and is far more durable than paper.
16:34And this is why the Winchester Bible is so well-preserved,
16:37even after 858 years.
16:41So would a Bible like this have been a status symbol?
16:44Yes, it would have been a status symbol
16:45and every monastery that was anybody's monastery
16:49would have had a Bible.
16:50But pictures in Bibles is a very rare thing.
16:53The manuscripts are rarely illuminated,
16:55so this was a sign of status and power.
16:57Are these illuminated sections very valuable?
17:00If you want to put a price on it,
17:01you'd probably get a million pounds for one like that.
17:05We are actually missing some,
17:07so if anybody could find one of the eight that remain missing,
17:10we'd be very grateful.
17:11People have actually cut them out?
17:13Yes, somewhere in the last four centuries, they disappeared.
17:18There have been various opportunities for that,
17:20including Virgis turning a blind eye,
17:22having been bribed so that people could cut them out.
17:25So this particular hole is from the Book of Jonah.
17:30The front part would have been where the picture was.
17:33The back of the image,
17:34we've lost the story about Jonah being swallowed up by the big fish.
17:39Here's one that we did find in the 1940s.
17:43Somebody had found this section between some sermons
17:48in a stately home in Yorkshire.
17:50Altogether, the beautiful illuminated pictures in this Bible
17:55would be worth an incredible £50 million in today's money.
17:59Have we got any documentation about how much this cost to make?
18:05We haven't got documentation about how much this Bible cost
18:08because it was never finished.
18:10We reckon it would have cost about the price of a small castle.
18:17When Henry of Blois died in 1171,
18:20he was buried in a tomb right in the centre of the cathedral.
18:26In the years that followed, successive bishops of Winchester
18:30left a much bigger mark on the cathedral.
18:33These bishops redesigned and rebuilt it several times,
18:37and the biggest change to the cathedral came in the early 1400s,
18:41when a new style of architecture came in.
18:48It was called Gothic,
18:50and it meant huge, elegant walls shooting up towards the sky
18:55and massive windows firing countless beams of light
19:00down the aisle towards the altar.
19:03But it's the vaulted ceiling
19:06that's the real jewel in Winchester's architectural crown.
19:12The elaborate pattern of ribs is incredibly complex.
19:20Imagine how people must have felt when they saw that.
19:33But my favourite of the bishops' building projects in the cathedral
19:37is the Great Screen.
19:40Which I think is one of the most magnificent pieces of statuary
19:44in any cathedral in the whole of Great Britain.
19:47It dominates the most sacred place in the whole of the cathedral,
19:52and it just stands here going,
19:54look at me, am I great?
19:57On this screen, there are 56 different statues
20:01of various benefactors and kings and queens and saints,
20:06but things aren't quite what they seem.
20:09Have a look over here.
20:11See that statue up there?
20:14Doesn't she look a little bit like Queen Victoria?
20:18That's because it is Queen Victoria.
20:20All of these statues are 19th century.
20:24And there's a very good reason for that.
20:27The originals were pulled down and demolished.
20:31Their destruction forms part of another chapter
20:34in the story of both the cathedral and our country.
20:38A chapter in which the immense power of Winchester's bishops
20:42would be tested to the limits,
20:44and one man would be at the heart of it.
20:48WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL
20:55Winchester Cathedral.
20:59Once a seat of power of William the Conqueror,
21:02Alfred the Great and England's earliest kings.
21:07Following William the Conqueror's Norman conquest,
21:10its bishops became the richest and most influential men in the country.
21:16But the 1400s would bring an end to their powerful reign
21:21when a future king was christened right here in the cathedral.
21:27On 24th September 1486,
21:30the four-day-old Arthur, son of Henry VII,
21:34was christened here at Winchester.
21:38Arthur was destined to be next in line to the throne.
21:42At the age of 15,
21:44he was married to Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon.
21:48But then tragedy struck.
21:52Arthur fell ill.
21:54Five months later, he died.
22:00His 10-year-old brother Henry now became heir to the throne.
22:04He was destined to be crowned Henry VIII.
22:08Within 18 months,
22:10the young Prince Henry was forced to get engaged to Catherine.
22:15The Bishop of Winchester at the time was Richard Fox,
22:19one of Henry's closest advisers.
22:22He'd negotiated the original marriage
22:25between Henry's brother Arthur and Catherine of Aragon.
22:30Henry confided in the Bishop of Winchester,
22:33voicing his doubts about marrying Catherine,
22:36which provided the bishop with a bit of a dilemma.
22:39Should he encourage the marriage or not?
22:44The bishop knew the marriage would create a powerful alliance
22:47between England and the Spanish kingdom of Aragon.
22:52But should he encourage Henry to go ahead with it,
22:55knowing the future king had serious misgivings?
23:00A vaulted roof built by Bishop Fox inside Winchester Cathedral
23:04hints at the answer.
23:06Now, if you look in this mirror,
23:09you can see all these ribs that are splayed out on this ceiling.
23:13And where they join,
23:15there are these intriguing painted wooden carvings,
23:19which are known as bosses.
23:23These bosses were recently restored,
23:25and what they revealed was fascinating.
23:28So, in the centre, you have Henry VII with his monogram,
23:32and then on either side,
23:34you have Henry VIII, shown as a prince,
23:37and then on the other side, you have Catherine of Aragon.
23:40So, what's going on?
23:41So, I think it shows Fox really throw his weight
23:44behind the betrothal of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon.
23:48So, this is Bishop Fox actually being quite noisy and political...
23:53Yes. ..rather than delicate and subtle.
23:55Yes, I think that's possible, yes.
23:57This vault seems to suggest
23:59Bishop Fox was pushing Henry to marry his brother's widow.
24:04We'll never know if Henry or Catherine even saw this masterpiece,
24:09but what we do know is that in 1509,
24:13just a few months after he became king,
24:16the two of them got wed.
24:19Bishop Fox remained Henry VIII's confidant,
24:22and he rose to dizzying power.
24:25But that didn't protect his cathedral
24:27from the king's later actions against the Catholic Church.
24:36During his 24-year marriage to Catherine,
24:39Henry VIII had only one surviving child, a girl called Mary.
24:46Desperate for a male heir, he sought a divorce
24:49so he could marry Anne Boleyn.
24:52But there was a major problem.
24:54Only the Pope could approve a divorce, and he refused.
25:00In 1533, Henry ran out of patience.
25:03He married Anne Boleyn and declared himself
25:06the supreme head on earth of the Church of England.
25:12And in 1536, the English Reformation
25:15and the death of Henry VIII
25:18And in 1536, the English Reformation got underway.
25:26To stamp out the power of the Catholic Church and its bishops,
25:29Henry began to close the monasteries,
25:32which had wielded enormous power,
25:34rivaling that of the king himself.
25:39Anyone who resisted was brutally executed.
25:43In 1538, Henry VIII's men came for Winchester,
25:48which controlled a third of the country's wealth.
25:53On the 21st of September, under cover of darkness,
25:56a group of men broke into the cathedral.
25:59They tore apart St. Swithin's shrine and stole all the valuables.
26:04The silver alone in today's money was worth £400,000.
26:08Later the following year,
26:10the monks were thrown out of the monastery next to the cathedral,
26:14and it was demolished.
26:19The Reformation was possibly
26:21the greatest act of vandalism in British history.
26:24Priceless religious treasures were sold or destroyed.
26:29And even after Henry's death in 1547,
26:32the persecution continued,
26:34and his son, Edward VI.
26:40It was Edward's men who attacked Winchester Cathedral again
26:44in the 1550s.
26:46They tore down statues from the great screen
26:49and broke them apart.
26:51But miraculously, some of the originals survived.
26:55I thought they all just charged in and smashed them to bits.
26:58I did originally, too, but they were just...
27:01I did originally, too, but they would pull down the statue,
27:04they would knock off the head and the hands
27:06so that you couldn't tell who it was.
27:08Cut them into three chunks,
27:09and those three chunks were used as building bricks.
27:12It does look like a real person.
27:14It's so lifelike.
27:15And what about that hand, also from the great screen?
27:18And that hand also.
27:19And that would have been deliberately...
27:21Deliberately knocked off.
27:22Butchered. Yes.
27:26Winchester lost many of its priceless relics,
27:29and most of the monastery buildings were abandoned.
27:33But miraculously, the cathedral itself survived.
27:37And it was in the cathedral
27:39that this war against the Catholic Church came to an end,
27:43thanks to the next monarch, Mary I.
27:47The Queen was a staunch Catholic.
27:51She was determined to reverse this trail of devastation.
27:55To do this, she burned almost 300 Protestants
27:59who refused to return to her faith,
28:02which gave her the nickname Bloody Mary.
28:06As part of her plan, she married Prince Philip of Spain,
28:10one of Europe's great Catholic powers.
28:14The venue? Winchester Cathedral.
28:18Everyone loves a royal wedding,
28:20and it was exactly the same in the Middle Ages.
28:24On the 25th of July, 1554,
28:27Winchester Cathedral was decked with golden fabric
28:30and thousands of people crammed in to witness the celebrations.
28:35Just like today, every detail was carefully recorded
28:39for maximum public effect on an international scale.
28:45Mary was the only surviving child
28:47of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.
28:50With no father to give her away,
28:52she was given on behalf of the whole realm.
28:56Winchester was chosen as the wedding location
28:59partly because of its bishop.
29:03Stephen Gardner had been thrown in the Tower of London
29:07for remaining a Catholic during Edward VI's reign.
29:11Mary returned him to his Winchester seat,
29:14and it was he who conducted her marriage to Philip.
29:18After the wedding,
29:19Bishop Stephen Gardner blessed the marital bed,
29:22but it was no use.
29:24Mary remained childless,
29:26and once she died,
29:28her dream of a Catholic England had gone forever.
29:36Her Protestant stepsister, Queen Elizabeth I,
29:40succeeded her to the throne in 1558,
29:43and a long period of peace and prosperity
29:46followed.
29:48But then in 1642, all that changed.
29:57The English Civil War
29:59pitted Royalists against Parliamentarians
30:02in a struggle over who should run the country.
30:07Winchester was seen as a Royalist stronghold,
30:10which made the cathedral a prime target
30:13which made the cathedral a prime target
30:16for the Parliamentarians.
30:18Once again, it was under attack.
30:23Parliamentary soldiers burst into the cathedral,
30:26their flags waving, their drums beating,
30:29their matches lit.
30:31They smashed up the altar,
30:33they set fire to the prayer books and the hymn books.
30:36Most sadly of all, they broke into the mortuary chests
30:40and scattered the bones of the early English kings.
30:43Some people even say they picked up the bones,
30:46hurled them at the windows and destroyed them.
30:55After the marauding Parliamentarian soldiers had left,
30:58locals are said to have collected up the pieces of glass
31:02from all the smashed windows and kept them safe.
31:06Still, compared to some cathedrals which were ravaged,
31:09Winchester Cathedral got off lightly.
31:14So how come it survived?
31:19Well, Parliament sat in February 1651
31:23to decide which cathedrals should be demolished
31:26and the money given to the poor.
31:28And the people of Winchester petitioned Parliament
31:31and miraculously they won,
31:33which is why this interior is in the wonderful state
31:36that it is today.
31:39But what about those broken windows?
31:46After the war, it's said that the local people tried to repair them
31:51using the original glass that had been smashed.
31:55But there were thousands of shards of glass,
31:58they couldn't recreate the original images.
32:01Instead, they made this one colourful mosaic.
32:06And they put all the pieces of broken glass
32:09in the huge west window.
32:14Many stained-glass windows tell stories from the Bible.
32:18But the story in this one
32:20is of finding beauty in things that were broken.
32:26It's the only one of its kind.
32:29No other cathedral reused its broken glass
32:33to repair its windows in a patchwork.
32:39This is unique.
32:44The bones of the early kings that were thrown through the windows
32:48were returned to their caskets a little mixed up.
32:53And the damage caused to the cathedral was eventually repaired.
32:59But fast forward through the centuries
33:02and an even greater danger was to present itself.
33:06One that threatened to bring down the entire building.
33:11In the early 1900s, cracks started to appear here.
33:15It's as though the cathedral's back was breaking
33:18and the whole place was in imminent danger of collapse.
33:29During Winchester Cathedral's long history,
33:33it's been vandalised again and again.
33:36First during Henry VIII's reign,
33:39then by his son, Edward VI,
33:42and once more by soldiers during the Civil War.
33:47But at the beginning of the 20th century,
33:50it faced an even more serious danger.
33:53One which threatened to bring the whole building crashing down.
33:59I'm walking towards the east end of the cathedral
34:03when suddenly something quite dramatic happens.
34:07Look, the whole floor starts sloping violently downwards
34:12and this wall is bowing.
34:16In 1905, the stone walls,
34:18which had been rock-solid for hundreds of years,
34:21were now breaking apart.
34:23These cracks were caused by the cathedral's weak foundations.
34:29Under the cathedral is a layer of peat,
34:32which, as you can see, isn't a very stable substance to build on.
34:37Over time, the peat has compressed unevenly
34:41under the massive weight of all this stone.
34:46The cathedral sits on top of this weak soil.
34:50And different parts of the cathedral were sinking by different amounts.
34:54If this continued, the building would collapse.
34:59The solution was to dig down through the peat 26 feet
35:04until they reached solid ground
35:06that could take the weight of the building.
35:09But there was a problem.
35:11As they dug deeper, water started gushing into the trench.
35:15In fact, the water eventually came halfway up the trench,
35:1913 feet, which is practically twice my height.
35:23This is because the soil underneath the cathedral was waterlogged.
35:28Even when they removed the peat,
35:30the water flooded into the trench from the soil around it.
35:37Project engineer Francis Fox
35:40came up with an ingenious idea of what to do next.
35:45Because they couldn't pump the water out,
35:48Fox believed they should work in the water to carry out the repairs.
35:52To get things underway,
35:56they called in a deep-sea diver called William Walker.
36:01He'd learned to dive in the Navy,
36:03where he was used to working in difficult conditions.
36:06But this would be his toughest job ever.
36:11Working by touch in pitch-black surroundings,
36:14he stacked and sealed watertight sacks of concrete
36:18like bricks across the floor and up the walls of the trench.
36:24Now the trench could be pumped dry,
36:27allowing masons to build new foundations beneath the building.
36:33The whole cathedral had to be propped up in this way,
36:37so in 1906, working six hours a day, six days a week for six years,
36:42William labored, filling up the trenches with concrete.
36:48He worked blind in freezing cold water,
36:52wearing a diving suit that weighed as much as he did.
36:57But despite the terrible conditions,
37:00William's efforts meant that by 1911,
37:03150 workmen had packed the foundations
37:07with over a million brick and concrete blocks,
37:11and the cathedral was safe.
37:13Without William Walker, the cathedral would have collapsed.
37:17He was given a knighthood
37:19and is remembered here with this charming little statue.
37:24His statue is just one of hundreds of artifacts in Winchester Cathedral...
37:33..many of which have a connection to Britain's military history.
37:38One of the most fascinating is in the original Norman crypt.
37:43This wooden cross is now a symbol
37:46for the countless young men who died during World War I,
37:50but it was made for just one of them.
37:56Valentine Braithwaite joined the army
37:59as the First World War began in 1914,
38:02after leaving Winchester College.
38:06Within two months, he was awarded
38:08one of the first military awards in history.
38:11He was awarded one of the first
38:13military crosses for bravery fighting in France.
38:18Two years later, on the morning of July 1st,
38:22Valentine led his platoon over the top of the trenches
38:26in the Battle of the Somme.
38:32On the first day alone, 19,000 British died,
38:36British Army's largest ever loss on a single day.
38:41Among them was Lieutenant Valentine Braithwaite.
38:48His mother received a letter from the Army Council
38:51saying that her son had died.
38:53Valentine's father wrote back to the Army Council
38:56this letter asking that the word died
39:00may be altered to killed in action.
39:05He was determined that there would be no suggestion
39:08that Valentine had been running away
39:10from the enemy when he died.
39:12This was deserting,
39:15and at the time regarded as the worst form of cowardice.
39:21If the letter said killed in action,
39:23there would be no doubt Valentine had died a hero.
39:29But the War Office refused his request.
39:34Valentine's father was devastated.
39:38He visited the battlefield himself in 1917
39:42looking for his son's body.
39:44He was determined to prove that Valentine
39:47had been running towards the enemy
39:49rather than away from it when he died.
39:52But his search was in vain.
39:56Valentine's body was never found.
40:00Three years after the war ended,
40:02Valentine's father bought a plot of land
40:05where he believed his son had fallen.
40:08And planted a wooden cross there.
40:12Later, he had a permanent stone cross made,
40:16making Valentine one of the very few soldiers
40:19to have a private memorial on the Somme battlefield.
40:26This is the original wooden cross
40:28which was brought to Winchester
40:30and placed in the crypt by Valentine's uncle
40:33who was a cannon here.
40:35Today it serves as a memorial
40:38for all those who died in the Great War.
40:44Nearly 1,000 years after it was built,
40:47Winchester Cathedral remains a church,
40:50but it's also part museum and part mausoleum.
40:55A £20 million restoration project
40:57is helping to protect the structure.
41:00And a full staff and an army of over 700 volunteers
41:04keep the cathedral running.
41:07All managed by the dean, the very reverend Catherine Ogle.
41:12You're just one person inside this huge space.
41:15You must have an enormous sense of responsibility.
41:19Yes. Sometimes.
41:22But it's an amazing responsibility to carry.
41:25But we're guardians of this fabulous,
41:28we're guardians of this fabulous place
41:30and we're not to drop the baton.
41:32We've got to pass it on to the next generation.
41:35And that is a big privilege.
41:37Do you ever wonder what it might be like
41:40inside here in 100 years' time?
41:42It'll be like this and better in some way
41:45because people will continue to really care for this place.
41:49I'm amazed at how many people.
41:52Hundreds of volunteers work here, you know.
41:55I think that'll continue.
41:58Winchester was once the capital of England
42:01and the cathedral at its heart
42:03has played a key part in our nation's history.
42:07It's been the site of royal christenings,
42:10coronations and weddings
42:13and the home of the wealthiest
42:15and most controversial bishops in the country.
42:20It's nearly been destroyed by kings,
42:23by wars and by faulty foundations.
42:28But it's a survivor.
42:33This cathedral is here today
42:35because of the valiant efforts
42:37of those throughout history
42:39who have fought to preserve it.
42:41And its future lies with those
42:43who continue that work today.
42:58For more UN videos visit www.un.org
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