The Great Hall

Welcome to the Great Hall of Winchester, a magnificent architectural survivor and the only standing part of what was once the mighty Winchester Castle. As you step into this vast, soaring space, you are entering one of the finest…

The construction of the Great Hall represents a pinnacle of early English Gothic design. King Henry III, a monarch with a profound interest in architecture and the arts, oversaw the development of the hall as a replacement for an…

Hanging high on the western wall is the centerpiece of the Great Hall: the Winchester Round Table. While local legend once claimed this was the actual table of King Arthur and his knights, scientific analysis of the timber has…

Following the English Civil War and the subsequent demolition of much of Winchester Castle, the Great Hall survived due to its utility as a center for the county's judiciary. For centuries, it served as a courtroom where some of…

Just outside the southern door of the Great Hall lies Queen Eleanor’s Garden, a meticulously researched recreation of a 13th-century medieval garden. Opened in 1986 by Queen Elizabeth II, the garden is named after Eleanor of…

Opposite the Great Hall, if you look down into the excavated ruins, you can see the foundations of a tower and a mysterious gated archway known as a sally port. This was a secret tunnel that allowed the castle's defenders to…

Connecting the medieval hall to the more modern 20th-century court buildings is a striking set of stainless steel gates. These were commissioned and installed in 1981 to commemorate the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana…

As we conclude our tour of the Great Hall, we are left with a profound sense of the continuity of English history. Within these four walls, the Norman desire for dominance, the Gothic artistic sensibilities of the Plantagenets,…