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Is this Winchester?

A Winchester Street Scene? - TrustNews Jun 14

The image on the cover of this TrustNews is of a watercolour taken from a colour slide in the Winchester Research Unit's archive. It is filed there together with other slides taken in the 1970s of Winchester views, especially of pictures in the collections of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House, but is not identified.

Our assumption is that this is a Winchester view, perhaps loaned to us for photography, but there is no associated paperwork and we know of other Winchester water-colours in this particular style. The date is probably about 1800, which is also older than other watercolour views of Winchester streets.

The water-channel running along the right-hand side of the street and the street lamps (post-1771, if Winchester) suggest this might be a view of the lower half of High Street, looking west, perhaps slightly uphill. If so the two streets coming in from the right would be Middle Brook Street (also with a water-channel on its far side, as was the case) and Upper Brook Street, or perhaps (as seems more likely) Upper Brook Street and Parchment Street. If the latter the street leading off to the left in the foreground would be what is today called Market Street.

The painted sign on the projecting upper story of the building in the foreground on the corner to left of the main street reads ‘WHITE LION INN’. This is a problem because there does not appear to be an inn/tavern of that name in Winchester at any date. Such names were however often changed and were sometimes of short duration.

This is a length of the Winchester High Street the north side of which is otherwise unrecorded except in Godson's plan of 1750. The view would be of some importance if it can be safely identified and we would be grateful for any suggestions.

Given the water-channels, the other possibility is that this is a view of Salisbury, where however there is also no record of a ‘White Lion‘.

Martin Biddle