The Story of the Royal Hotel - TrustNews May 1990
"My Lady West's"
Dr John Henry King, then Parish Priest of St Peter's, Winchester, later to become Archibishop King, wrote an account of the history of the Royal Hotel in the 1930's. This is his introduction.
"In a quiet backwater of the sleepy old City of Winchester stands the Royal Hotel. The roar of modern traffic fills the main streets by day and by night. But St Peter Street is calm and unperturbed though not one block removed from the thoroughfare which sees, feels and smells the endless stream of humans and goods bound for London or the seaside. Practically the only motors which enter our peaceful street are those of clients coming to lunch or to stay at the "Royal". Though the latter is out of the way and far from pretentious externally, yet the knowing visitor is well aware that it has a history, for the present host and his family are never tired of telling their guests that it was once a convent and of showing them the erstwhile chapel of the Community. But none of them are probably aware that this history begins long before the coming of the nuns".
Dr King was referring to the story of Lady West, whose house, in the days of Queen Elizabeth I, stood where the hotel stands today. This he established from an extract from a legal document relating to the sale of the property in 1810 which he found in the Archives of St Peter's.
"All that capital messuage or tenement and gardens thereunto belonging and near adjoining, situate, lying and being on the south part of an ancient capital messuage or great tenement formrly pulled in order to the new building and re-edifying thereof known by the name of "Lady West's House".
Refuge for Recusants
Lady Mary West was the daughter of Sir George Guildford and widow of Sir Owen West. He was half-brother to the 9th Baron De la Warr, of Wherwell Priory. Their nephew, William, son of Sir Owen's brother George, was created Earl De la Warr by Queen Elizabeth in 1569 when he came into his uncle the 9th Baron's estates. It is thought that Sir Owen died before 1569.
The first mention of Lady West in contemporary records is in 1579, when the Privy Council was informed that "Masses are being said at the Winchester house of My Lady West". In 1580, Sir Francis Walsingham was told in a letter that, "A priest named Ballard had his abode chiefly in Hampshire at the house of an old lady called Lady West". In 1583 her name appears on the list of Recusants for the Parish of St Thomas. Recusants were those who refused to attend Service in the Established Church. Failure to obey the law resulted in crippling and cumulative fines or imprisonment or both.
For those who adhered to the Old Faith these were perilous days. To be a priest was in itself a capital offence. To be a recusant was dangerous enough. To provide a meeting place for Recusants and to give shelter to priests were acts of the utmost heroism, particularly if your house was in the middle of the City.
Fleshmonger Street
The exact location of the original Fleshmonger Street, now St Peter Street, is still a matter for discussion. It is thought to have been around the High Street end of the present street, where the butchers once clustered their booths around the little church of St Peter Marcellis, an area known as the Shambles. Certainly this was the case from the time of the Black Death. Most of the area covered by the present St Peter Street and Parchment Street was taken up by gardens or closes. At what is now the North Walls end was the great garden belonging to Hyde Abbey.
New buildings evidently appeared in the middle of the 16th century and the Subsidy Rolls for 1586 record the payment of a tax of five shillings by Lady West in the "Thaldermanry of Jewry Street". This was a considerable sum and, as the tax was based on the value of possessions, Lady West must have been a lady of some substance. None of her neighbours paid taxes of more than a few pence.
Our last record of Lady West is the most dramatic. In December, 1583, a search was made in her house by priesthunters acting on orders from the Privy Council. They found "a secret place" enclosed with bordes in which were hidden divers old and new papistical books, printed and written, and, in a place more secret, underground, a chest bound with iron, containing all manner of massing apparell, a chalice of lynne (?), a box full of singing cakes (Communion breads) a pyx of ivore sett in woode, a green Agnus Dei sett in satten, besides divers new Mass books and catechisms".
In the "Ladies Chamber" was found a "supra altara" (This would have been a portable altar stone similar to those preserved in Peterhouse today).
One "ffraunces", Lady West's servant, confessed that the chest had been in the Ladies Chamber that morning but had been moved when news reached them of the search in the City. It is probable that "ffraunces" was amongst the number of young women recusants who were imprisoned in the Castle at this time but what became of her Mistress we do not know. Possibly her age and rank saved her from prison. It is also worth noting that while the Mayor was obliged to carry out instructions for the Privy Council and the Bishop, the Citizens of Winchester and the Cathedral Clergy were generally tolerant and reluctant to proceed against their fellow citizens.
It is also interesting to note that there is a 16th century chest of uncertain provenance preserved in Winchester Cathedral which is "bound with iron". In the February following the search the arch spy, Thomas Dodwell, named five priests who had been given refuge by Lady West. All were eventually apprehended. Two died in prison, three on the gallows. One of these, Roger Dicconson, was hanged, drawn and quartered in the Bar Ditch, now the site of the Station Yard in Andover Road, on July 7th, 1591. With him was also executed the old husbandman, Ralph Milner, born in the reign of Henry VIII, who had been guide and helper to the priests in Hampshire.
17th and 18th centuries, Corham, Smiths and the Sheldons
Towards the end of the 17th century the property was owned by Roger Corham the Cavalier, who had fought at the Siege of Basing House as an Ensign. His family had large estates in Hampshire which included, at one time, Cranbury Park, Abbotts Barton House, property in Hyde Street and, it seems, for some years, In Fleshmonger Street.
According to a note in David Keene's Medieval Winchester, (Page 687), "From 1665 a strip of ground to the North of this property (two plots towards the Southern end of Fleshmongers Street) was leased separately and included in the new brick buildings (now part of the Royal Hotel) built on the North By Roger Corham".
Corham, at this time, was living at Silkstead Manor where he had started the famous school which later moved to Twyford. Richard Cromwell was his close neighbour. In or around 1680 Corham built the first Peterhouse on the site of the present No's 7, 8 and 9 St Peter Street. Here he installed a resident priest to serve the people of Winchester. It is doubtful if he lived in the house on the site of Lady West's. Sometime later he sold the property to Bartholomew Smith from the Soke. The earliest date on the deeds of the Royal appears to be 1693, when Mr Smith was the owner.
The Smiths were an old Recusant family. Bartholomew's second son became a priest, President of Douai College and then one of the four Bishops appointed in the reign of James II. Consecrated in the Palace of Whitehall, he became Vicar Apostolic of the North. The crozier presented to him by James is to be seen in the Treasury of York Minster. It was taken from Bishop Smith in 1688, following the accession of William of Orange. He chanced to meet the Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire on the road and the Lord Lieutenant, refusing to acknowledge his right to such a symbol of authority, promptly confiscated it.
One of the Bishop's sisters became a nun. A second sister, Anastasia, married William Sheldon, son of Ralph Sheldon, Equerry in Exile to King James. His younger brother inherited the property but all four of his sons died within a short time of each other from smallpox and so William Sheldon became the new owner. Dr Milner tells us that the Sheldons continued to inhabit the great house until "the grandfather of the present Francis Sheldon of Burton Constable built the elegant house in Southgate Street which is now in the possession of the Government". This is the present Searle House. Francis' brother, Edward, a profligate gambler, who changed his name to Constable upon inheriting the Constable Estates, sold the house in St Peter Street in 1759 to the Vicar Apostolic of the London District, Bishop Talbot. Winchester was then part of this District. It became known as "The Bishop's House".
The Benedictine Convent 1795-1857
Dr Milner had ambitious plans to turn The Bishop's House into a Junior Seminary to prepare boys to go on to the Seminary then establishing itself at Old Hall, Ware, following the expulsion of the Colleges from France. In 1795, however, his plans were changed by the arrival in Winchester of a Congregation of English Benedictine nuns driven from Brussels by the French Revolutionary Armies. Theirs had been the first Convent founded abroad by English ladies after the Dissolution of the Religious Houses by Henry VIII. Its co-foundress and first Abbess was Lady Mary Percy, daughter of the Duke of Northumberland who was beheaded for his allegiance to Mary, Queen of Scots.
Dr Milner installed the nuns in the "Bishop's House". He saw to the construction of a chapel at the top of the house and had the names of their patron saints painted over their stalls. This chapel now forms two of the hotel bedrooms but its shape is still easily discernible although the bell rope which, until comparatively recent times hung through the ceiling, is no more.
At Milner's suggestion the Sisters started a school for girls on the lines of the one they had run for many years in Brussels, in which many English girls of good families had been educated. Besides the boarders or "Pensioners", they also taught without payment, the poor girls of the parish.
They kept the strict Benedictine Rule as fully as possible but only wore their habits in the mornings when no one could see them. In the afternoons they changed into secular dress.
In 1810 the Congregation bought the house from the London District and renamed it "The Convent of the Glorious Assumption".
In the sixty three years they were to stay in Winchester thirty two nuns were professed. Many who died were buried in St James' Cemetery. Amongst these was Lady Abbess Margaret Tancred who had led her nuns to safety from Brussels. She died in 1797 and was succeeded by Dame Phillipa Eccles, the 15th Abbess. She made history by being the first Abbess to be installed in England since Tudor days. When she died in 1811 her successor was Dame Mary Benedict McDonald, who had been the first nun to be professed in Winchester.
After the Consecration of Dr Milner as Vicar Apostolic of the Midlands in 1803 he and all his fellow Bishops met in Synod in the Convent. Bishop Milner never severed his connection with the Congregation. He acted as their Visitor and came to see them every year until his death in 1826. In his will he left them £100 and his episcopal ring.
The Sisters left Winchester in 1857, moving to East Bergholt in Suffolk. It was said at the time that their,16, privacy had been disturbed by young soldiers who would sit on their garden wall and watch them. More probably the move was occasioned by the cost of upkeep of the house and the new buildings in the neighbourhood which overlooked them. Their departure was a great blow to the Parish. They had been a major influence and were much loved. An article in the Hampshire Chronicle of 17th September, 1898, said, "Many remember the good Sisters and their Abbess, their kindness and earnest religion. The scholars of Mr R. Short's School close by occasionaly saw them at their windows and, in summer, received most enjoyable Windsor pears from their fine tree".
The house and grounds were purchased by the well known entrepreneur, C. W. Benny. He had formerly owned the White Hart in the High Street, an inn which, with its predecessor, had existed since the reign of Henry V, when it was known as the "Harte". Benny converted the 17th century house into an hotel and he called it "The Royal".
The Royal Hotel 1857-1990
By 1898 the Hampshire Chronicle writer quoted above could describe the hotel in glowing terms.
"It is famous everywhere for its perfect comfort and pleasant position and its associations and surroundings, which carry us back to the Dissolution in a manner....
....for its comforts, its convenience and its quiet, home like surroundings, due to the able management and tact of Mrs Spriggs and her family.
Many a disciple of Isaac Walton has enjoyed his evenings amongst his brethren of the gentle craft in talking of flies, tackle, great fishes lost (these are always large), the moroseness of millers, the abundance of weeds and other Waltonian items. Francis Francis, whose memorial tablet adorns the walls of our cathedral, and his "May Fly Mess" will ever be associated with the halcyon days of Itchen fly fishing from the Royal.
The Hotel was, for many years, the headquarters of the Hants Carabiniers Yeomanry Cavalry when it assembled in Winchester and the gardens were visited by hundreds of Wintonians when the excellent band played there at Mess.
The barristers of the Western Circuit have also, for a considerable time, held their annual banquets at the Royal, after the St John's Rooms ceased to be used for that purpose.
The Hotel will always be at home to those who fish the troutful Itchen and also to the enormous number of visitors or pilgrims to "Olde Winchester" who, in cosy rooms and on pleasant lawns can talk over their enjoyment and await the inevitable bill with the calm comfort that it will be reasonable and that the rest and refreshment and other things desired at an inn are worth the outlay". Nearly a hundred years on the hotel still retains much of this same peaceful character even although it has taken in surrounding buildings and a new block now flanks the still "pleasant lawns". It continues to flourish and is about to expand once again.
For the parishioners of St Peter's it must always be a very special place as they remember with gratitude the devoted courage of that redoubtable old widow, "My Lady West", who risked so much, and also the dedication of the Benedictine Sisters. It is fitting that this still quiet street should, today, be the centre of Roman Catholic life in Winchester.