#TTRPG #RPG – Wightchester Support Material RELEASED!

You can purchase it HERE

Filthy assistant, William Baldwin, went above and beyond and produced a bunch of layouts for various buildings within Wightchester. However, there was not room to include them in the final product. You can find them here, along with (for your convenience) the two introductory adventures, Nox Comitae and Prima Noctae, as well as a large-scale image of the layout of the city.

I was going to charge PWYW for this, but the Shopify store doesn’t support that option, so – in need of money – there is a small charge, even though you can get the adventures and the map from this blog for free if you don’t want the layouts.

Enjoy!

#TTRPG Wightchester Full Scale Map

The PDF version has a lower-resolution map, so for those who want it here’s the overall city map.

#TTRPG – Wightchester: Prison City of the Damned RELEASED!

Wightchester is a ‘city crawl’ adventure book for 5e D&D, Grimdark 5e, Mork Borg and OSR roleplaying games. Set in an alternative 17th century England where the dead have risen from the grave and one city, completely overrun, has been turned into a hellish prison for the dregs of the Kingdom’s society. Dark, bleak, challenging horror fantasy in a setting of almost unrivalled detail.

500 pages of an Early Modern walled city, packed with intrigue, mystery, horror and death.

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

HARDCOPY

Wightchester Backer Update

IMPORTANT WIGHTCHESTER UPDATE

I have sent a barebones preview document to all backers. Please check your email and spam folders and if you paid for a Zombie insert, please submit that information.

#TTRPG – Wightchester Writing Assistance Needed

Due to recent physical and mental health problems, I need assistance to finish up my Wightchester project.

Everything is plotted and placed out, what I need assistance with is not mechanics, but rather the descriptions of locations. I have the rooms marked out and I have information about who lived there, what happened and what is happening in the ‘now’. I just need assistance to get it all done and have to admit that I can’t do it alone, or with the small amount of (very welcome) help I’ve had so far.

I will compensate you for your work as I am able, and this really is just filling in the ‘gaps’ with descriptions. It shouldn’t be too arduous.

It’s hard for me to back off from the ‘auteur’ nature of most of my work and to share the load, but I want to ensure this all gets done in time.

Plenty of people have offered to help in the last couple of days, but my brain is scattered and disorganised. If you could mail me – even if we’ve already discussed it – at grim@post-mort.com – with the title Wightchester Assistance, I’ll get back to you ASAP.

Here’s an example description, so you know what you’re getting into:

***

The Chapel

The stone chapel may be one of the oldest parts of the school. It’s almost a proper little church, large enough to hold a good proportion of the pupils all at once. It has tall, plain windows of coloured glass and a spire that towers over the rest of the school, terminating in four conical stone spikes. The chapel is a solid building, and seems undamaged. Perhaps some members of the school held out here.

Encounters:

• [ ] – 1d4-1 random zombies in the area around the chapel.

Nave

The main hall of the chapel runs from the entrance all the way back to the chancel. It is a simple, humble chapel – despite the wealth of the school – or so it would appear. The nave is chock full of

Encounters:

• [ ] – 1d4-1 Child zombies that have wandered in.

North Transept

The tall windows grant a little more light here, to penetrate the grey interior of the chapel. The two walls to this sides are covered with great wooden boards, graven with the names of the great and the good who passed through the halls of the school. You recognise the names of lords, clergy and guildsmen, with some modest amount of space for more.

South Transept

The south transept has more light, coming in through clearer windows, but there is nothing here but a few kneeling cushions and a small bookcase, full of battered hymnals and books of prayer.

Loot:

• [ ] – Approximately 50 copies of the school’s hymnals.
• [ ] – Approximately 50 copies of the school’s prayerbooks.
• [ ][ ][ ] – Kneeling cushions.

Chancel

The altar may be a simple one, but the goods upon it are far from humble. More pews are arranged either side of the altar in a step pattern – the space for the choir. The cross is of gold, not brass as you had first assumed, and the candle-holders either side are also plated with the same metal. Behind the altar sits a small wooden chest of fine, sweet-smelling wood, there is no lock that you can see, but it has a finely stitched, cushioned top.

Loot:

• [ ] – Golden cross.
• [ ][ ] – Golden candlesticks with beeswax candles.

In the chest:

• [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] – Beeswax candles.
• [ ][ ][ ][ ] – Bottles of red wine.
• [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] – Dry crackers/meals.
• [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] – Expensive incense/uses.

#TTRPG – Soliciting Assistance to keep Wightchester on Track

As you may or may not have gathered, I had a bit of a health scare.

They say a change is as good as a rest, but given that this was a hypertensive attack, rather than a mental health break, I’m not sure that holds true.

Anyway, I’m on a couple of weeks of bed rest and waiting on more tests at the hospital, which means I’m behind on my crowdfunding project, Wightchester, despite having made contingency plans for such an eventuality.

I had previously put out a call for assistance, but wasn’t exactly compis mentis due to meds and distress, and I thought it best to be specific about what I need help with in a place that people can see, rather than contacting people back individually.

My good friend T-Shirted Historian whom I do RPG discussion streams with has stepped up to help me with some rules appendices and some location descriptions.

• Mostly what I need is someone to help with statting up some of the foes and NPCs.
• A familiarity with 5e is essential, Mork Borg and the OSR (Lamentations of the flame princess) a bonus.
• If anyone else wanted to help with location descriptions, that would also be a bonus. I include an example of such below.

Mail me grim@post-mort.com if you can help me out. I will compensate if I can, but it’s not going to be a lot of money as it hasn’t been budgeted for. Free product is another possibility.

House 7 (Open)

The door to this house lays on its back, inside the ground floor room. The wood is somewhat splintered, and the frame is split. The door was broken clean of its hinges, leaving a gaping maw in the front.

Parlour/Kitchen

The room is in total disarray. Looking down at the floor you see hundreds of footprints, layered one atop the other. Every piece of furniture in the room has been shattered to splinters and pushed against the outer walls, which are covered in filthy handprints. Even the stove, the only recognisible piece of furniture left, is dented – as though buffeted by some great force.

Encounters:

• [ ] – The stairs have been weakened by whatever force smashed up the room. Roll 1d6 for each person ascending or descending the stairs. On a roll of 1 they collapse, dropping the poor sap six feet to the ground, scraped against broken wood for +1d4 damage. A Dexterity Save, DC 15 prevents the damage, by allowing them to grab hold of the stairs.

Bedroom

Like the floor below the bedroom is smashed to flinders and absolutely covered in footprints with thousands of black and brown handprints all over the walls. There is one difference though, a bloody patch in the middle of the room, scattered with broken fragments of bone and teeth, odd patches of hair and skin. A bloodied hatchet lays next to it, its haft broken.

#TTRPG – Wightchester Preview – Cathedral Park

You can preview the full article on my Patreon

Whitchester Cathedral dominates the skyline of the city, like a great grey spike, reaching drunkenly into the sky. Up close it seems cyclopean, dizzying in its height. The area around the cathedral is open ground, grass and mud, punctuated by grave markers and sarcophogi of the great and good. This, in turn is bounded by skeletal trees and the attendant buildings that service the grand church, alleys and gates granting access to the profane, from this domain of the sacred.

The Cathedral was where many sought safety and assistance when the city began to fall, overwhelming the otherwise defensible building and causing its downfall. Religious faith was no protection from the dead. What was once the holiest of places is now amongst the unholiest.

Without upkeep and repair it is slowly crumbling, crumbling and flooding as it sinks into the wet ground beneath it under its own weight, but it is also one of the few more open areas in the city, where you can see the enemy from a safe distance.

Encounters: There should always be some wandering dead, scattered throughout the open area of Cathedral Park. Perhaps 2d6 walking dead.

Whitchester Cathedral

The Cathedral is an enormous slab of a building, built of grey-blue stone, adorned with statuary, crenelations and stained glass. Half of the leaning spire is clad in crumbling scaffold, wood and rope creaking and swaying with each gust of wind. Crows and pigeons perch on the high walls and statues, cooing and croaking as they stare down at you.

The ground here is damp, the floor of the cathedral – and its surrounding paving – a good foot lower than the surrounding soil and covered in puddles of filthy water. Defiant ivy has begun its relentless creep up the walls, with the greenest, brightest shoots beginning to spread across the lower windows and choking the drainage.

The enormous, iron-bound doors of the entrance are partially open, the bar splintered. Saints and bishops stand impasive and powerful, graven in stone while the sound of unearthly moaning echoes out from the nave.

The building is, perhaps, 500 feet long by one-hundred feet wide, with the transepts extending another fifty feet out from the main body of the cathedral. The tower is 150 feet high, with the pointed spire extending another 100 feet into the air above that.

The building is largely constructed of blue-grey limestone, brought from the Southern coast. Much of the exterior wall is filled in with great patchwork constructions of mortar and flint, creating a riot of blues, grey, white and black – when the walls are wet. This provides a great many hand and footholds, though they are shallow, slippery and frequently sharp.

The building is surrounded by paving slabs of the same grey material, creating a walkway around the outside of the entire cathedrals, and between it and the chapter house. Many of these slabs are sinking into the earth and are at wonky angles, the gutters and troughs for draining water are similarly disjointed, creating puddles and soggy earth all year round.

Statuary

The statuary that adorns the cathedral depicts, primarily, gargoyles and angels. It can be hard to tell which is which, as many of the angels are more accurate depictions of how they are described, than merely winged humans. Many have multiple pairs of wings, multiple faces, many eyes or other manifestations that can look monstrous to those without a proper biblical understanding.

The main door is flanked by the statues of two previous bishops, Bishop Beckyngham and Bishop Tyndall, depicted in their robes and with dour, pious expressions. Above them, wings spread over the top of the door, is a more conventional depiction of an angel, with a halo of radiating spikes – like spear-tips.

The Gate

The gate is some twelve feet high, split in half. It is made of thick, English oak and bound and studded with iron. The wooden panels have been painted a dark blue, but are encrusted with bloodstains and dented by some great, external pressure. The wooden bar that secures the gate – from the inside – is splintered, again as though sundered by some great external force. If replaced, the door could be secured against the dead.

The Nave

Sickly, coloured light penetrates the irriguous interior of the cathedral through its stained glass windows that run down either side of the nave. From here you can see almost all the way to the presbytery, past the high altar. A gallery runs around the building, up above the nave and the vertiginous, vaulted roof yawns above you, echoing every sound you make over and over again. Here and there water drips through broken roofing, to echo around the cathedrail. Crows and pigeons flap and sport amongst the arches, blaspheming the house of god with their droppings and raucous cries. Scattered and fallen pews fill the centre of the hall, covered in dried blood and torn shreds of cloth.

The nave is the broad, main hall of the church that runs from the entrance to the transepts and the high altar. Two rows of columns run along either side of the nave, helping to support the upper gallery and its wooden panels. The central area is open to the high arched and vaulted roof above, dizzying in its spiraling patterns and arcs.

There are twenty-two stained glass windows, eleven in the northern wall, eleven in the southern wall, each depicting a scene of martyrdom. Each also has a second, round window above it, admitting more light onto the gallery.

Northern Wall (West to East)

1. The Massacre of the Innocents – Babies and children impaled on spears.

2. John the Baptist – His severed, bloody head, surrounded by a halo.

3. Saint Stephen – Bloodied, with a stone balanced on each shoulder and atop his head.

4. Saint James the Greater – Bloodied, driven through with a sword.

5. Saint James the Just – Bloodied, carrying a club in his hands.

6. Saint Peter – Crucified upside-down.

7. Saint Paul – Decaptitated, holding his own head.

8. Saint Andrew – Crucified on an ‘X’-shaped cross.

9. Saint Matthew – Impaled by spears.

10. Saint Philip – Crucified on a tall cross.

11. Saint Thomas – Bloodied, driven through with a spear.

Southern Wall (West to East)
1. Saint Potninus – Surrounded and torn at by wild beasts.

2. Perpetua and Felicity – A woman and her servant, pierced by swords while a cherub looks on.

3. The Scillitan Martyers – Twelve faces looking up at a bloodied sword.

4. Saint Justin Martyr – Decaptiated, with an axe close by.

5. Saint Polycarp – Burned at the stake.

6. Saint Timothy – Blooded and battered on a pile of stones.

7. Saint Mark – Depicted hanging from a rope.

8. Saint Simon the Zealot – Depicted severed in half at the waist.

9. Saint Barnabas – Being burnt at the stake.

10. Saint Bartholomew – Stripped to the waist and covered in bleeding whip marks.

11. Saint Jude – Bloodied, decapitated, bearing an axe.

Encounters: It is easy for the dead to enter the Cathedral and to mill around inside, but less easy for them to get out – the other entrances and exits being locked and blocked. The dead seem drawn to this place, as though still considering it to be a place of refuge. There should be 2d6 random undead within the area. Note that zombies from other areas of the cathedral will be attracted by noise, and may join in any attack.

Loot:

• [ ] Beeswax Candles (Long): 1,500 in stores, chests and cupboards, (several hundred in candlesticks and candalabra).
  [ ]Beeswax Candles (Votive): 500 (stored near and set in racks to the north and south sides of the nave).
• [ ]Tallow Candles (Beef/Mutton): 500 (cheaper candles, set in candlesticks and sconces in the nave, many nibbled on by mice and rats).
• [ ]Multi-Wick Oil Lamps: 12, hanging from the ceiling, six on each side of the nave.
• [ ]Kegs of Lamp Oil: 24, in stores and chests.
• [ ]Brass Candlesticks: 100.
• [ ]Brass Candalabra: 12, hanging from the ceiling, six on each side of the nave.
• [ ]The Poor Box: 485 copper pieces, 15 silver pieces, 4 gold pieces.

Choir & Presbytery

The benches for the choir stand two deep on the north and south of the junction between the nave and and transepts. Before them are the pews for the great and good, the gentry from before the city fell, closer to the altar, and to God. It is dark here, shielded from the windows, the candles burnt all the way down into rippling overflows that spill onto the floor. Gilt and brass glitters in the patchy light, reflecting off the geometrically carved choir screens. Before the high altar, and to its side, up a short set of stairs is the pulpit, graven in the shape of a boar and picked out in gold, behind both a stone screen, silver and gold on light grey stone, carved with stars, sun and arches.

The choir stands at the junction of the nave and transcept, in the westernmost part of the crossing. This is the area in which the choir sings, and the wealthy elite of the city would attend services. A once-rich rug of mouldering red, lays across the centre of the area, soggy with damp.

Encounters: 2d10 child zombie choirboys, others may have wandered away. 1 zombie priest and 1d4 other random zombies.…

#TTRPG – Wightchester Preview – Areas of the City

You can preview the full article on my Patreon

Wightchester’s Areas

Through the iron bars of the prison cart, across the rolling acres of downland and the rounded hills, Wightchester hoves into view. Is it your imagination, or does the sky look a little darker over that blighted city? It squats behind its walls, dowdy and stained with flocks of crows constantly circling. Even from this distance you think you can hear the hungry dead within, a constant, low cacophony of mindless moaning. From outside only the rooftops and the tallest buildings are visible. Above them all rises the square-block-and-spike spire of the Cathedral, ragged with crow’s nests, a holy signpost to the most unholy of places.

Even beyond the walls its presence can be felt. The cart rattles through abandoned farmhouses and villages, only a few occupied by fearful looking peasants, eking out a living where no other will dare. Around and around the city is circled by hedgerows and ditches, by wooden spikes and tangles of dry, dead brambles.

Guards file out of their barracks to gawp at the passing prisoners, fresh meat for the butcher’s block.

Outside the Walls

The Landscape

Wightchester sits within the South Downs, atop a part of the River Itchen, north of Cheesefoot Head. The Itchen was once a clean river, fed by chalk aquifers, where wild watercress would grow and trout would swim in great number. After flowing through Wightchester the water is now unclean, carrying disease to many and occasionally even raising the dead from their graves downstream, if they are buried too close to the water. Farmland watered from this source does not grow well, often producing twisted fruit, ergot-riddled grain, rot and sourness.

Wightchester itself lays across a very slight valley, carved by the river, but the downland all around is low, gently rolling and you can see a long way on a clear day, at least as far as the nearest hills. Much of the land around Wightchester is abandoned, dilapidated villages with rotting thatch, copses of trees reclaiming the ground, half-wild pigs, ponies, cows and sheep roaming the downs. Only a few bother to still work the land here, fearful of the dead as they are. The villages, already emptied by war and plague, now only host the stubborn, the radical, the insane and outlaws.

The walls of Wightchester are not considered sufficient to contain the threat, and so various earthworks and protections have been erected around the city. A great bank and ditch – in the old style – bone white from the chalky soil and only just beginning to be colonised by weeds and brambles. A barren circle of salted earth, salt thought – by some – to be proof against demons and witchcraft. Great fences of sharpened staves, blunting in the weather, but appearing scary enough. A great spiny hedge of blackthorn has also been planted, both as protection and to hide the rest of the defences from passing travellers. Here and there are also great crucifixes, raised by the religious, thought to help contain and control the devilry that reigns in the city.

A single path winds through each and every part of the defences, studded with several gatehouses of wood and stone, each one guarded by a handful of men, the final gate being that of the city itself.

The Garrisons

Two garrisons stand to defend England from the foulness within the city. One has been built up in an old farmhouse, the other in a vacated manorhouse – where the Captain Safe-On-High Travers commands from. A whole company is stationed here, though not of the best men. Wightchester has become a dumping ground for the insubordinate and the untrusted, duty here is a punishment – hence the Puritan captain.

The soldiers here number a hundred, fifty billeted at the farmhouse, fifty at the manor…

#TTRPG – Wightchester Preview – Crimes and Misdemeanours

Read the full (early) excerpt at my Patreon.

Crimes and Misdemeanours

Everyone or almost everyone, who passes through the prison gates of Wightchester is guilty of a crime. If not guilty of a crime, they are either thought to be guilty or have volunteered to enter the city.

For those who are criminals, or wrongly accused, there must be a crime for which they have been sentenced. The following table provides a proportionally weighted set of possibilities for that crime. The player may choose from the list or roll randomly, and it is the random roll that I recommend.

Of course, if you roll randomly for both the crime and whether you are guilty or not, you may find that your character is guilty of some thoroughly repugnant or horrendous crime. You can always play your character as having fundamentally changed or as seeking reform and redemption, but better roleplaying opportunities come from rolling with the punches. This is especially true in such a ‘Grimdark’ setting.

These crimes are culled from The Bloody Code and the reasons for transportation to the colonies. As such, some are apocryphal to the period, but then there wasn’t a city full of undead in our real history.

Keep in mind that being consigned to Wightchester, or transported, was seen as merciful compared to being hung, beheaded or subjected to other forms of execution. In England, beheading or hanging (and sometimes gibbeting) were the main methods of execution, with beheadings not ending until the mid-1700s. Burning at the stake was primarily reserved for women guilty of treason and ‘unnatural crimes’ and continued into the late 1700s. Given the supernatural pretexts of the setting of Wightchester, burning – and other horrible forms of execution – are likely to be relatively prevalent.

Guilty or Innocent? – Roll 1d10

1-9: Guilty.
10: Innocent.

Crime – Roll 1d100

1-80: Thieving (Roll 1d12)

1-2: Burglary: Breaking and entering a premises, likely causing damage, and making off with goods of any value, or even failing in the attempt to burgle.

3: Demanding Money with Menaces: Extorting people for money by making threats or offering ‘protection’.

4: Fraud: Pretending to be something you are not to gain sympathy, regard or money. This might include pretending to be a pensioner or war veteran, selling phoney cures or masquerading as a priest or similar person ‘of station’.

5: Highway Robbery: Stand and deliver! You hide your face and rob people on the road, often at gunpoint.

6: Looting: This might include scavenging from shipwrecks (though wrecking is apocryphal) or making off with goods during a riot.

7-8: Pickpocketing: A shilling in 1667 is equivalent to about £6 today, and that would be enough to send you to the gallows or the colonies if you were caught.

9-10: Poaching: There is common land upon which you are allowed to hunt, graze your animals and so on, there is also the land that is privately owned, or owned by the Crown. So much as take a single rabbit on land, you’re not permitted access to, and you could be killed or transported.

11-12: Other Theft: Shoplifting and other forms of theft were punishable by death or transportation if they amounted to three shillings or more (£18-20 in today’s money).

#TTRPG – Wightchester Preview – History of Whitchester

YOU CAN READ THE FULL PREVIEW BY SUBSCRIBING TO MY PATREON

The Ancient Past

The grassy downland and forests made this area of Hampshire prime land for early settlers of Britain. What was good ground for hunting and gathering, with clean water from chalk aquifers, plentiful game and open land, was also good for farming as society developed further. The ground was also full of one of the most important resources that prehistoric man could hope for, flint.

So important was flint that whole flint mines were opened up in prehistory, carved into the bone-white chalk of the hills. This flint was worked into arrowheads, spearheads, knives and even large axe-heads. Flint could be honed to a razor’s edge, almost as sharp as obsidian, and its use persisted even into the bronze age.

To this day old flint mines are uncovered, or fallen into, and the ground is littered with old arrowheads, which are considered to be elf-shot. The ground is full of such mysteries, and older ones, fossilised sea creatures such as sea urchins, which are called ‘fairy loaves’ by the locals. Amongst the more prosaic flint points, the occasional piece of ‘true’ elf-shot is found, silvery like the moonlight, more fragile than glass.

Hill Forts

The remains of ancient hill forts still dot the landscape, though the efforts of farmers and Christians have erased many of the old landmarks and standing stones. Whitchester was the site of one such fort, a great bank and ditch, with a man-made hill at its centre. That hill, or what little remains of it, is underneath the site of the cathedral today, and the old ditch – long used as a spoil-pit – often turns up bones, pottery and other trinkets from that bygone age.

Oppidum

Whitchester developed into a town, around the old fort. A wooden pallisade was raised further out from the old fortifications, creating what the Romans would call an ‘oppidum’. This fortified township was a meeting place for different tribes within the Belgae, and a religious site for the worship of Nantosuelta, a river goddess of the Celtic tribes. While not as important as the other, surrounding towns, Whitchester had its own niche of importance as a secondary marketplace.

Roman Settlement

When the Romans came to England they saw the value in the land around Whitchester as much as anyone else. After their conquest they set about Romanising the populace and built many a villa in and around the same area. Whitchester itself survived as a garrison town with a small fort, safeguarding and supplying Roman settlers and soldiers as they moved about the region and built their roads.

City Walls

Romans raised the first wall about the town, circumscribing the site of the oppidum – and a little more besides – with a stone-reinforced bank and flint-blocked wall of chalk-white, as tall as a mounted man. The town never came under attack in this period, but the large stones of the walls, reinforced with proper Roman bricks and terracotta, were broken apart and reused time and again in the years to come.

After the Withdrawl

After the Romans withdrew a great deal of progress and civilisation was lost. Whitchester survived better than most, retaining many of the things that Roman conquest had brought, not least of all its Roman sewers, insisted upon by some ancient and forgotten magistrate or commander. Like many settlements across the area, this loaned Whitchester a reputation for cleanliness and health that wasn’t necessarily deserved.

The Old Church

Throughout the medieval period, Whitchester continued to be built up. Its walls thickened, grew taller and were expanded. A grand old church was built upon the hill in celebration of burgeoning Christianity. No longer a true fortress, it still held some strategic importance in the petty struggles of kings and lords. Consistently, throughout the period, Whitchester provided food and lodging for soldiers and displaced peasants.

The New Walls

Each new conflict or lordling saw Whitchester’s walls addressed. Different stonemasons and different materials, different styles and choices. The ‘New Walls’ ended up an oddly-shaped patchwork, changing without warning, torn down and built up seemingly on a whim. Old flint was supplemented or replaced with slabs of sandstone and mudstone, statues and crenelations were added – here and there – and the gatehouses were constructed. Much of the walls are still this medieval craftsmanship, worn smooth by the passage of time, but as sturdy as when they were laid.

The Maze of Streets

Given constant raiding by Vikings throughout the years, ranging as far south as Andover or further, radical reconstruction of Whitchester’s streets was undertaken. The passageways through the city were turned into a snarled gnarl of knotted pathways, intended to confuse and slow down any invaders while armed men took to the church. Fortunately, the town was never raided and, over time, the citizens of the city rebuild in a more conventional fashion.

The Normans

In 1066 the Normans invaded England from the North and South. Having overcome English forces on the coast, they rapidly took over the rest of the country and became the new rulers over it. Whitchester became the site of a Norman motte and bailey castle, the first and only proper castle to stand upon the site. In addition to the building of the castle, the Normans undertook the construction of ‘The New Church’, a more impressive replacement for the pre-Norman cathedral that had begun to be built on the site. This church would form the basis for the cathedral-proper in later years, and little of the original remains. The combined weight of the castle and the New Church largely flattened old hill fort, meaning the castle barely rose above the ground or the enclosure.

The Grand Cathedral

The final phase of construction on Whitchester Cathedral began in 1348 and would not be completed for two centuries, interrupted almost immeditely by the arrival of The Black Death. Constant delays and changes of whim turned Whitchester’s Grand Cathedral into a schizophrenic mess of a construction, full of follies, blind corners, cubbies, staircases to nowhere and mismatched windows. Nonetheless, it has a certain gothic charm to it, and was the site of many petty intrigues in the Church, as it provided so many secretive places to meet.

The Burning

In 1360 a great fire swept through Whitchester, burning almost everything on the left bank of the river and within the bounds of the city’s walls. Enormous sacrifices were made to protect the Cathedral, and this came at a huge cost of life and property everywhere else in the settlement. Between the ravages of the plague and the fire, the city was catastrophically depopulated, but soon began to be resettled and the opportunity was grasped to give the place a new layout and new buildings, this time – primarily – of stone and brick, paid for in no small part by the local wool trade, which was about to be impoverished.

The Black Death

From 1348 The Black Death ravaged England and Whitchester seems to have particularly angered God, as it suffered greatly from the disease, as bad – or worse – than London, though no reason for it has ever been discovered.

Significant Instances of Plague:

• 1348 – 60% of the population killed (3,000 of a population of 5,000).
• 1361 – 20% of the population killed (600 of a population of 3,000).
• 1563 – 25% of the population (1,000 of a population of 4,000).
• 1593 – 20% of the population (800 of a population of 4,000).
• 1625 – 15% of the population (500 of a population of 3,500).
• 1665 – 25% of the population (1,250 of a population of 4,500).

The city was consistently and constantly unable to cope with the number of casualties in each instance. The dead were buried en masse in a number of plague-pits around the city, most notably in the excavations for the new Cathedral, this being reckoned a worthy grave, as even commoners were to be interred on the holiest of ground. Later instances were buried beneath the city’s parks and within the old ditches, or deep in the crypts below the Cathedral in mass graves, dug into the clay, chalk and sedimentary stone.

Sheep, Cows and Wool

The Tudor period spanned from 1485 to 1603, a lineage of royalty that most notoriously included Henry the Eighth. It was a transformative period for England in terms of religion, power and a flowering of art and technology referred to as The English Renaissance.

Dissolution of the Monasteries

After Henry the Eighth had separated the Church of England from Rome in 1534, not a great deal changed. This was simply Catholicism with the King at its head instead of the Pope. This was also the King who took on the ‘divine right of kings’ and who ruled with an iron fist, and a lot of executions. From 1534 to 1540 the crown ransacked, demolished and disbanded the overwhelming majority of monasteries and convents throughout England. Winchester was not spared, with its Carmelite convent and Benedictine monastery both being looted and broken down. The cathedral was similarly looted of many of its treasures, but remained relatively unscathed…