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Talk:Winchester: Difference between revisions

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Winchester was nominated as a good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (June 20, 2014). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

Winchester received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

This article is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

UK geography C‑class Mid‑importance This article falls within the scope of WikiProject UK geography, a user-group dedicated to building a comprehensive and quality guide to places in the United Kingdom on Wikipedia. If you wish to participate, share ideas or merely get tips you can join us at the project page where there are resources, to do lists and guidelines on how to write about settlements.UK geographyWikipedia:WikiProject UK geographyTemplate:WikiProject UK geographyUK geography articles C This article has been rated as C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Cities C‑class This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cities, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of cities, towns and various other settlements on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CitiesWikipedia:WikiProject CitiesTemplate:WikiProject CitiesWikiProject Cities articles C This article has been rated as C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. Hampshire C‑class Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Hampshire, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Hampshire on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HampshireWikipedia:WikiProject HampshireTemplate:WikiProject HampshireHampshire articles C This article has been rated as C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

• /Archive1 - old talk from Winchester, Hampshire

There is a problem in the history section arising from a corrected mistake. Until April 5th it included the lines "...it was established by King Alfred the Great as the main city in his kingdom in 827. The Saxon street plan laid out by Alfred is still evident today...", which reads fine but is wrong (Alfred wasn't even born in 827). This was corrected to: "...it was established by King Egbert as the main city in his kingdom in 827. The Saxon street plan laid out by Alfred is still evident today...", which is factually consistent but stylistically weird as Alfred hadn't been mentioned until that point but it sounds as if he should have been.

So if Egbert established it, is it his street plan which survives? Or did Alfred redevelop it when he became king (in which case the sentence should be rewritten to reflect that)? Or was it actually Alfred who established it as a capital, as originally stated, and it was the year that should have been corrected? --82.47.198.253 11:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to Mike Ashley's Biographical Encyclepedia of British Kings and Queens, Edward the Elder (d.924) was indeed buried in Winchester Cathedral. I'm undoing the undo and providing a reference for that fact. If this is not the case, could someone provide a ref of some sort showing that I'm wrong. thanks! Josh 14:58, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From a plethora of possible references, I have given the most recent and specific I could find. There are many errors in Mike Ashley's work. Edward the Elder was buried in the New Minster, then at Hyde Abbey. His last resting place is marked in the Hyde Abbey Garden near the Leisure Centre. Also, strictly speaking Egbert and Canute are not 'buried' in the Cathedral. Their bones are in abox. Walgamanus 22:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for setting it straight! Josh 00:50, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The list of people is growing, maybe its time to split it off as Bath has done here List of people from Bath. GameKeeper (talk) 20:08, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. In addition, the section within this article should be written as prose, not as a list. Waggers (talk) 10:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fingerpuppet, it is not enough to revert my changes to the lead without discussion. You need to provide a proper source, per WP:V, for the lead as it now stands. You have only provided an ONS dataset, "for urban areas and urban subdivisions in England and Wales with populations of 1,500 people or greater."

As I have stated at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_geography#Infobox_uniformity, the idea that articles should start with the absurd tautological construction "X lies at the heart of the wider City of X..." is damaging to our standing as a credible reference work. Can you please explain where else, outside Wikipedia, you find this approach taken? Chrisieboy (talk) 11:27, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See WikiProject UK geography, which you are a participant in, and have yet to convince editors in your way of thinking. Get a consensus there, and your way of thinking will prevail. Until then (or until one of the alternative proposals gains consensus), the status quo rests. The source is simply for the population figure. Fingerpuppet (talk) 13:45, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it is incumbent on me to get a consensus at WP:UKGEO, only here. In any case, as I have stated there, the majority of English cities are already treated this way. Now, about that source..? Chrisieboy (talk) 14:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No note of William being crowned in Winchester, I seem to remember he was the Last King of England to be crowned in the City, and the only one to be crowned twice (Westminster Abbey being the place for his other coronation)

Hello, I'm proposing some alterations to how we deal with cities and places within cities that share its name. The proposal, found at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_England#City_disambiguation, includes Winchester and the City of Winchester. I'm really hoping to gain a broad consensus for this proposal, and the rationale why is found at WP:ENGLAND too. --Jza84 |  Talk  10:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I had to suppress an interesting article about the historic watercourses through Winchester. Luckily the text is still available at de:Benutzer:JuergenBeer. Something definitely needs to be said here on the subject. — [[::User:RHaworth|RHaworth]] (talk · contribs) 12:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Celebrity blogger and upcoming author Christopher Couture is originally from Winchester and in his first novel, Superhated, his first character called Alexander Cunningham is from and resides in Winchester. His second novel, Life In Pink, is based in both Winchester and Southampton.

"Upcoming author" souds like an advertisment for a book. I fail to see how this bit of trivia meets the Notability test, especially since the link to Winchester is so tenuous anyway. And particualrly since Mr Couture doesn't have a Wikipedia page to himself. I have deleted the paragraph. --Iacobus (talk) 00:43, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"It was planned to educate poor boys before they moved on to New College, Oxford and often a life in the church."
I imagine the writer meant, a life serving in a church as a priest, etc, but it isn't clear from the line.--93.173.88.173 (talk) 21:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the text this is stated as meaning "white fortress" Is this correct? The Welsh name for Winchester is Caergwynt. That could equally well mean Windy castle i.e Caer: castle, Gwynt: wind. Modern Welsh It is windy: Mae hi'n (g)wyntog White castle is more likely to be Caerwyn in Welsh I accept possible ambiguity related to old language, but Welsh is quite conservative in this respect. thanks Jellytussle (talk) 08:53, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's just based on the old Latin name. — LlywelynII 02:03, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Editors - I provided the image of the Guildhall shown in the article. Here are a couple of images taken around the same time showing those leading the foundation and opening ceremonies as well as architect etc. Maybe of interest in the main article? WyrdLight (talk) 17:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PS: these stones are on either side of the main entrance inside the portico.

Currently no mention at all of transport, or of the Itchen Navigation. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:49, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Added today. Pterre (talk) 14:11, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's really good. Gosh, what a lot of links! Martinevans123 (talk) 18:21, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mallory's Death of King Arthur (at least as treated by Peter Ackroyd) several times lists Winchester as the seat of Camelot Simon Minahan05:19, 8 October 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.17.236.101 (talk)

For a discussion of whether Winchester was the capital of Anglo-Saxon England see Talk:London#Winchester the Anglo-Saxon capital? Dudley Miles (talk) 11:53, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Winchester/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ritchie333 (talk · contribs) 13:36, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to review this - an article well worth trying to get to GA status.

General

• Have all the action points in Wikipedia:Peer review/Winchester/archive1 been addressed?
• There is one disambiguation link : St. Catherine's Hill which should be St. Catherine's Hill, Hampshire
• winchestercitywomen.co.uk appears to be a dead site
• oxjamwinchestertakeover.co.uk appears to be a dead site
• Other dead links are History of Winchester Guildhall, MOD training education, David Nicholls One Day book review
  • All of the above should hopefully be done? I've replaced all dead links and added more references in the article. As for the peer review, I'll check if anything is outstanding. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 14:04, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that all looks fine now. Thanks! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:30, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

• The article is 23K of prose, which requires 2 or 3 paragraphs. My gut feeling is that the lead could include a little more, but I'll make a more informed decision when I've read the rest of the article.
• I am confused by the references to "Winchester", "England", "South England" and "City of Winchester". I know they all refer to different entities, but to a non-UK resident, they could be confusing. It might be worth trimming some of these down.
  • I've hopefully made this more clear, the City of Winchester is a district which is explained in the lead, and I've labelled 'South England' to the actual region of South East England to make this clearer. I'll clean up as I go through. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 14:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• At the recent GA review of Ashford, Kent, we reached a consensus it was good to have some distance information in the lead. How far is it from London by road might be a useful statistic to pop in. Also, remember any information that goes here needs to be added in the body - I'm not sure we explicitly say anything in the body about it being next to the South Downs and along the course of the Itchen. A "Geography" section (which could merge with "Climate") would accomplish this.
• The second paragraph has two sentences that both start "Winchester". To avoid repetition, the second one could simply say "the city".
  • I've replaced this in all parts in the article. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 14:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• "and the famous public school, Winchester College." - famous to whom, exactly?
  • Reworded.
• "have led Winchester to become one of the most expensive and desirable areas of the country" - I'm a little concerned this information is slightly out of date, in the body it says Edinburgh overtook it as the most desirable place to live in 2007.
  • I've replaced this with a newer reference coming from December 2013. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 20:50, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This also needs doing in the body (currently under "Media and culture" but may be worth moving to "History") Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 07:56, 19 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

History

• "Settlement in the area dates back to prehistoric times" - I'm a little uncomfortable by this sentence. How about "The area around Winchester has been inhabited since prehistoric times"?
  •  Done
• "all in the near vicinity" - how about "nearby" instead?
  •  Done
• The book citation "Cunliffe B. Wessex to AD 1000 1997" needs a page number
• "Although in the early years of the Roman province it was of subsidiary importance to Silchester and Chichester, over time it came to eclipse them both" - do we know when exactly? Would be nice even to give it a century (1st? 2nd?)
  •  Done
• "the city covered an area of 144 acres (58 ha), making it the fifth largest town in Roman Britain by surface area" - this claim does not appear to be in the source given (PJO Archaeology).
  • Clarified and re-worded
• Islocalhistories.orgareliable source? It claims the town was founded in 70 AD, while other sources date the foundation back even further.
• "Its Old English name was Wintanceastre" - needs a citation (as historic spellings can vary, as noted in numerous entries in the Domesday Book)
  • Clarified, ref added
• "The Saxon street plan ...." the majority of this paragraph is cited to a single source (The Struggle for Mastery p44) - is that correct?
  • I've added more references to back the paragraph up
• "the judicial quarter in the south-west; the tradesmen in the north-east" - should be an "and" instead of ";" here
  •  Done
• "The medieval city walls, built on the old Roman walls, are visible in places. Only one section of the original Roman walls remains" - does this mean that only one section of the medieval wall is visible, or that several bits of the medieval wall exist, but only part of it dates from Roman times?
  • Clarified
• "A serious fire in the city in 1141, during the Rout of Winchester, accelerated its decline" - suggest "The city suffered a serious fire during the Rout of Winchester in 1141, which accelerated its decline". Also this whole paragraph is unsourced
• "However, William of Wykeham (1320–1404)" - I don't think we normally have dates lived listed in the prose
  •  Done
• "Middle ages" should be wikilinked
  •  Done
• "organised a small riot" - quotation should not be in italics
  • Done, I think this could have been a typo.
• The section about the Buttercross is probably better suited in the "Landmarks" section
  • I'm not sure, the Buttercross paragraph does contain a lot about its history and the history of the city, should this be kept and a new paragraph about the Buttercross be created in the Landmarks section? ☠ Jaguar ☠ 20:47, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• "The novelist Jane Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817 .... " - this paragraph is unsourced
  • I've sources the entire paragraph
• The "Further learning" section is partly unsourced and would sit better in "Landmarks" or possibly "Education"
  • Moved this into the landmarks section

Climate

• This section doesn't have any prose. You could talk about how Martyr Worthy is the nearest Met Office station, and summarise the local geography (per the earlier suggestion that the overall location in the lead isn't in the body).

Governance

• I'm not sure about some of the prose here, "Steve Brine ... beat Martin Tod" just sounds wrong. How about stating who is the current MP, then mention any notable MPs before that. Definitely worth mentioning that Gerry Malone lost his seat by two votes - I lived in the area at the time of the '97 election and there seemed to be campaign posters all over the place - it was a very marginal seat!
• Some of this section is unsourced - though I'm not sure any of it is honestly "material likely to be challenged"

More later.... Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:36, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review, I'll address those points one by one! ☠ Jaguar ☠ 14:03, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Landmarks

• "Winchester Cathedral, the longest cathedral in Europe, was originally built in 1079" - does this mean it was the longest when built, or is it the longest now?
• "It contains much fine architecture" - "fine" according to whom?
• "Dodson, Aidan. The Royal Tombs of Great Britain." - needs a page number
• "The ancient Pilgrims' Way travelling to Canterbury begins at Winchester" - does this mean specifically at the cathedral, or simply in Winchester generally? If the latter, it probably wants moving.
• The last two paragraphs about the Cathedral are unsourced
• Wolvesey Castle and Palace is unsourced
• "Winchester is well known for the Great Hall" - well known to whom?
• The Winchester Military Museums source appears to simply be an advert for visiting the museum and doesn't really cite anything preceding it - most of this paragraph is unsourced
• The paragraph on the Hospital of St Cross is unsourced
• Canterbury is linked twice in this section
• "the Guildhall dating from 1871" - the source supplied suggests work started in 1871 and it opened in 1873
• The same source is used to cite the City Mill, but the word "mill" does not seem to appear in the source. I wonder if this is simply the wrong source being used here?
• Same problem with demolishing part of the old town - it's not in the source supplied.
• The second half of the last paragraph in this section is unsourced

Education

• I'd merge the primary and secondary school sections together
• "Both schools often top the examination result tables for the city and county" - the source supplied is for Midhurst Rother College and only talks about one year's exam results, not a general high performance
• University of Winchester should be wikilinked
• Winchester School of Art is unsourced
• Peter Symonds College is unsourced

Sport

• A lot of content here is unsourced
• The first sentence about Winchester City FC is too long and probably wants to be reworded

Transport

• "Road" and "Roman road" can probably be merged. This section wants expansion, there are Roman roads running in all directions from Winchester, as can be easily glanced from an OS map. I would also mention where the M3 goes, and regarding bottlenecks, I would definitely mention the history of the old A33 Winchester Bypass (a horrendous bottleneck from my memory) and Twyford Down here as it was a major national news event that gained saturation television coverage at one point.
• Bus services could mention the Park and Ride - one runs on the old Chesil branch line and one has a car park on the site of the old bypass, so definitely worth bringing up
• The section on rail could do with noting when the stations opened (1839 for City, 1885 for Chesil). Also worth mentioning that part of this line is on the Park and Ride and part of it is now the A34 King's Worthy Bypass
• I'm not sure that the source titled "Winchester Bus & Train Travel Times" would mention the closing date for Chesil station. Chesil's own article states it closed in September 1961

Law courts

• This section can probably be merged with "Governance" and is largely unsourced - particularly the Rose West murder trial.

More later. There seems to be quite a lot of unsourced material in here that will need to be sorted out. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:45, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Media and Culture

• This section has significant problems. There are many one-sentence paragraphs, and too much unsourced content. The list of notable people is especially problematic - for instance the article claims that Frank Turner has a prominent association with Winchester, but his own article doesn't even mention the city. Lucy Pinder's own article only states she was born in Winchester (her article implies she grew up in Southampton and supports the football team) I would only include people who have a notable connection with Winchester, rather than just someone who happened to grow up there. For instance, when we took Ashford, Kent to GA, we left in John Wallis and Simone Weil, but left out most other people.
• "the award-winning Blue Apple Theatre" - rather than just saying "the award-winning", which I think falls under the "word to watch", mention the specific awards it has received
  • Blue Apple's own website doesn't mention them winning any awards, so I think it's safe to assume "award-winning" is spurious unless someone comes forward with a reference to show otherwise. VerityH (talk) 14:30, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• "Peter Symonds College" is already linked in an earlier section
• The assessment of the town being a good place to live may be better off in another section, perhaps "History"? It's not really anything to do with Media and culture.

Winchester in fiction

• Most of this section is unsourced. I don't think the section title is a particularly good one - we already know the article's about Winchester. I've checked a number of other town and city GAs, including London, Rhondda and Canterbury, and none of them have an "in fiction" section. I would take the historical entries (once sourced!) that talk about a specific part of the city and merge it into the appropriate place.
• I'm not sure the citation for Captain Scarlet is reliable, or indeed whether this needs to be specifically mentioned in the article at all.
• I don't think the information about Death Note is important enough to be mentioned here. This, and other information should be carefully reassessed to see if it can be moved to another section. If not, it should probably go.

International relations

• I'm surprised that Laon is the only place twinned with Winchester - aren't there any others?
• The last paragraph in this section is unsourced. I'm surprised at the claim that Le Kremlin-Bicêtre is named after the city.

See also

• You don't need Winchester Hat Fair, it's linked (and mentioned) in the main body of the article

Images

• Image copyrights are all okay
• For captions, you don't need a full stop when there's only one sentence
• It might be nice to have a picture of the station or the football grounds, and put in the appropriate section, if one exists

Title

• You might want to consider moving this article to Winchester, Hampshire, and moving Winchester (disambiguation) here. In the last 90 days, this article got 57,949 hits while Winchester rifle got 73,435. That might be sufficiently close to lead to people searching for "Winchester" not getting the page they expected. (The pub in Shaun of the Deadisnot named after the city!) However, all that is outside of the scope of this review. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:15, 19 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Summary

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a(prose, no copyvios, spelling and grammar): b(MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a(reference section): b(citations to reliable sources): c(OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a(major aspects): b(focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a(images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b(appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

I have to be honest that there is a lot of work still required to get this up to GA status. Particular problems are the sourcing, lack of focus in some of the later sections, and the general section layout. However, there's nothing at this stage that I feel is completely insurmountable, so I'm going to put the article On Hold pending improvements.

If I had to make one recommendation, it would be to visit Winchester soon (if you don't live there) and pop into one of the bookshops (IIRC there is a good one on St George's Street though it's been well over 10 years since I've been near it). Town bookshops tend to have a dedicated "local history" section where you can find a selection of good book sources to use, provided you pick one that's not self-published. As well as being professionally written, they condense historical facts down to what a layman reader finds important. That's exactly what we should strive to do with articles. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:33, 19 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to flag up that I have posted a comment at Talk:Winchester#Winchester the Anglo-Saxon capital? about an issue that I think needs dealing with before the article passes GAN. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:07, 19 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Epilogue

I'm sorry, but I think I'm going to have to call time on this review. As I said, this needed substantial work to get to GA status, and we seem to be going backwards now. I think we need to go through and check all the offline sources to properly confirm the article's verifiability, and that's pretty much a deal breaker at this stage. Once we've checked through the existing sources, we can then revisit the layout and structure and hopefully meet back for another GA review in a month or two. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:20, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As I see that Winchester has been nominated for GAN, I think the question of whether it was the Anglo-Saxon capital should be raised. It is frequently claimed in popular and non-specialist works, but historians of Anglo-Saxon England say that it did not have a capital in this period. For example, Frank StentoninAnglo-Saxon England, p. 539, discussing London's claim to be the capital, says "In the eleventh century the conception of a capital city had not taken shape anywhere in the west. The centre of government in England was the king's mobile court." Sarah Foot, in Æthelstan: the first king of England, pp. 78-79 on Winchester in the tenth century: "Even if the court spent increasing amounts of time there, especially in Elder the Edward's day, this did not make Winchester the 'capital' of Wessex, or of the expanded English realm. It remained just one of the West Saxon king's many royal residences, albeit apparently a favourite one for the family in death as well as in life." John Crook in his article on Winchester in the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (2nd ed) does not say anything about it being the capital. (This article and its bibliography are a valuable source on Winchester in this period.) I think this needs addressing. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:44, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The first thing I would say is that the lead should not say that Winchester was a former capital of England! That is just factually wrong - what we now know and identify as "England" has always had London as the capital. London's article itself states that by the 11th century it was unquestionably the capital, and cites the relevant page on Stenton's book that you mention above.

Although I see a book entitled "Historic Winchester England's First Capital", the publisher, BiblioBazaar, is not one I recognise as a reliable source.

As for being the capital of Wessex, I see "England", Guy McDonald, New Holland Publishers, 2004, p222 which says "Winchester calls itself the 'ancient capital of Wessex'. So too do Wilton, Hindon, Somerton, Shaftesbury and Chippenham." "England for Dummies" p. 263 talks about "Winchester, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Wessex" (I don't believe I've ever cited a For Dummies book but you would at least hope that being geared towards beginners and nonexperts that it would put emphasis on being factually correct!), and "The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Fifth Edition Revised" p407, refers to St Swithun as "the Bishop of Winchester, the the Wessex capital".

From this, I would conclude that it is correct to state Winchester as "described as the former capital of Wessex" in the body. I don't mind it going in the lead in a section that talks about the history and origins, but I don't think it should be in the opening sentence.

This reinforces my closing comment at the GA review that nominator should arm himself with a good selection of book sources so the many unreferenced or questionable sections I identified can be fixed. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:24, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Oxford Dictionary of SaintsisWP:RS for saints, not for Anglo Saxon history. None of the sources cited as saying Winchester was the capital are reliable sources for Anglo-Saxon history. The sources I have cited above are by leading historians of Anglo-Saxon England. Stenton's volume of the Oxford History of England is still the standard history, although now dated. Sarah Foot is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford University and an Anglo-Saxon specialist. Dr John Crook is a leading historian of Winchester and consultant archaeologist to Winchester Cathedral. The universal view of Anglo-Saxon specialists, so far as I can discover, is that the court was mobile and there was no capital in this period, and we should base articles on their views, not the statements of writers who are not experts on the period. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:50, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the description of Winchester as an ancient capital is so prevalent, it would be remiss not to mention it in the article. Perhaps something like this would do the trick while retaining factual accuracy:

Although the consensus among historians of Anglo-Saxon England is that the concept of a capital had not yet become established in western culture, Winchester has since been referred to as an ancient capital of Wessex and, in some cases, the first capital of England.

With appropriate references of course. WaggersTALK 10:20, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That looks fine to me although I would suggest a slight tweak. "Although the consensus among historians of Anglo-Saxon England is that the court was mobile in this period and there was no fixed capital, Winchester is commonly referred to as the ancient capital of Wessex and, in some cases, the first capital of England."

I could email a scan of the Crook encyclopedia entry on Anglo-Saxon Winchester if that would help. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:07, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do we need to include "in some cases, the first capital of England"? Otherwise that's okay. I'm not disagreeing with the assessment of the sources at all; rather I was reinforcing the point that it is commonly considered a "capital" of Wessex, even if that's considered inaccurate by experts. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:15, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fine by me to delete the last bit. Perhaps "described as" would be better than "referred to"? Dudley Miles (talk) 11:29, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think so. Just for completeness, the existing source that claims Winchester being the "capital of Wessex" (the Penguin History of Britain 1066-1284) does mention a move of the treasury from Winchester to Westminster by 1190 on the page cited, which is not really what is claimed in the article. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:51, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I will have a go at revising the Anglo-Saxon section tomorrow. Dudley Miles (talk) 12:54, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Winchesterian?

The addition 'Wintonian' was recently reverted in favour of the strange construction 'Winchesterian'. I would say 'Wintonian' is more usual - at least among, er, Wintonians. Pterre (talk) 09:25, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree, although a very quick search reveals no decent references to support either, so perhaps it should be deleted altogether? waggers (talk) 09:51, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wintonian

I see this has gone again. It's one of those things where the demonym is so well known (locally) as to be 'taken for granted' and it would not occur to a local that it required a citation. If we forget about Wikipedia contributor User:Wintonian who (I presume from his early edits) hails from Winchester, ignore the entry in List of British regional nicknames#W and the entry for Wintonian in Wiktionary, and the various commercial enterprises based in or around Winchester with Wintonian in the name (such as http://www.wintonian.co.uk), we still have plenty of examples. As you might expect for a run-of-the-mill expression these tend to be a bit random, but we have:-

• Sample Hampshire Chronicle headline 'Wintonian in Central America mission'
• Typical local news content such as Winchester going bike crazy after CycleFest launched (The events were formally launched at Winchester’s Holiday Inn on Wednesday (April 10), with Wintonian and cycling commentator, Anthony McCrossan, on hand ...)
• City of Winchester Trust Winchester's High Street
• The Wintonian Room in Winchester Guildhall

If you want some more serious books an example would be:

• Casson, Steven Hyde (1827). "The Lives of the Bishops of Winchester From Binnius, the First Bishop of the West Saxons, to the Present Time: in Two Volumes. Containing the lives of the Roman Catholic Bishops". Rivington. Pterre (talk) 17:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Pterre, and thanks for your thoughtful and well considered reply.

As background, I don't think it can be taken for granted that the demonym is very well known locally. I've lived in Winchester for over thirty years, and while I have heard the word used, in my experience it's very rare and would be unrecognised by most local people. Basically, my concern was that we might be giving undue prominence to a word that might be only known by a very small fraction of the population of a small town, which might be, say, a few hundred people at best.

From what I can see, there has been a big upsurge in the use of the word "Wintonian" since around 2010 - for example, the "Hampshire Chronicle" and "this is Hampshire" articles that you reference are from that recent time. My concern is that 2010 is when the word was added, unreferenced, into the Wikipedia article. So we need to be careful about a "circular referencing" back to Wikipedia, where people use the word because it's in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia then picks up on those references as evidence of usage. That's an important reason why I think we need a independent sources for the word and how it is used.

If we search the Hampshire Chronicle archive from 1999 (which I understand is the start of the online archive) up to 2008/2009 or so, there are a few mentions of the word, but they appear to be very few and far between - less than one per year. So we are talking about a word that is extremely rare even in the local paper that is perhaps more likely than any other publication to use it. My best understanding is that "Wintonian" is a relatively obscure word that has been used very occasionally by a few people to describe someone from Winchester. Usually it tends to be used in reference to the medieval history of Winchester (eg as in the City of Winchester Trust article, and the interesting source from the 19th Century that you found).

In summary, I'm very happy for the word to go back into the article, but I would suggest that (1) we give an appropriate citation to an independent source and (2) we don't give it more prominence than is justified by independent citations.

Enchanter (talk) 00:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be quite happy to see this relegated to a less prominent position. Whether it is a long stsnding usage or a fsirly recent revival, there is no doubt that it is in use (and IMHO infinitely preferable to 'Winchesterian').

Someone called? This is a term that I am fairly sure has some historical meaning to it, be that a person who is from Winchester or just one that went to the college. Such meaning may have been lost in time, but then this is more of feeling of mine based on the context of its occasional usage than factual evidence. No it is not in conman usage though as perhaps alluded to above it seem to be most often be used as a term of endearing localism in the Hampshire Chronicle.

Returning to its historical usage I see that it is used here [1], [2], the former being a book by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (b. 1835 - d. 1915) and the (possibly) more recent a work in latin by a Dr. Erik kooper I think.

If we are going to mention one of these terms (and IMO we should if some historical context can be identified and sourced) then it should prehaps be 'wintonian' rather than 'Wincesterarian', which I had not herd of until coming to this article some time ago and it doesn't produce much when doing a search [3], although my knowledge or lack of it is irrelevant, the lack of usage is however to my mind compelling. --wintonian ^talk 23:15, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it someone who attends or attended the college is a WykehamistorOld Wykehamist. Wintonian refers to a local resident. I've also never come across Wincesterian, having lived in Winchester for 12 years.Pterre (talk) 08:27, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes you are correct my brain must have fallen asleep before the rest of me. --wintonian ^talk 19:24, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

some locals... for residents... or people from... or...

Couching this with lots of weasel words is against policy, unhelpful, and doesn't alleviate any of the concerns about sourcing. The statement could still use some sourcing, regardless. Surely some local government website or history will mention it in passing? Meanwhile, phrase the point simply and directly: it's the common demonym. Better yet, find a way to just include a "demonym" section in the infobox and remove it from the running text altogether. — LlywelynII 02:03, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've done another search for sources for usage of "Wintonian", and can't find any to give good support to "Wintonian" as a common demonym. I've therefore removed the reference from the article. Some comments:

• I can find no dictionary, reference book or similar good quality source that defines "Wintonian" as a demonym referring to people from Winchester
• There is lots of evidence of "Wintonian" being used in the past few years (in local papers etc). However, that is after the definition was added, unsourced, into Wikipedia in around 2010. I suspect that the popularity of the word now may be because it's one of the first things people read about when the look up Winchester in Wikipedia. We should be careful about this kind of "circular referencing".
• Looking at evidence of usage before 2010 (such as local papers etc), the word "Wintonian" was only occasionally used to refer to someone from Winchester (see above from my comments a few years ago for more detail).
• Where the word was used, before 2010 it it was often used to refer to someone who went to King Alfred's College (now the University of Winchester). The college newsletter was called "the Wintonian" (source: A history of King Alfred's College, by Martial Rose, 1981, page 65), and the alumni association referred to students and former students as Wintonians Example here.
• There's no doubt that the word Wintonian was used in medieval times; Wintonia is the Medieval latin name for Winchester. However, that doesn't give evidence that Wintonian is a common demonym.

Given the lack of sources, I've removed the sentence from the article. If mention is brought back in, I suggest it should be something more along the lines of "The word Wintonian is sometimes used to refer to Winchester, people from Winchester, and students at the University of Winchester". It needs a good source - and not a source that gets its information from Wikipedia! Enchanter (talk) 09:29, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see that it's been discussed in the past from the comments above but somehow is missing in the most recent versions of the page. I've included some sourced treatment: feel free to find still-better sources, but kindly don't just blank parts of the city's history. — LlywelynII 02:03, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I'm in favor of a switch to the less precious BC/AD format but this edit established the use of the page as BCE/CE, so kindly maintain that pending a new consensus. — LlywelynII 02:20, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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It would be very helpful if this article had a map that showed Winchester within the context of the British Isles or at least England, to benefit those who don't know where Winchester is... Stevenmitchell (talk) 01:56, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Stevenmitchell: The existing map does exactly that. In the top left hand corner is a map of England, with Hampshire highlighted. The main map then shows Winchester within Hampshire. WaggersTALK 11:07, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We could lavel Basingstoke and Southampton, poss. Portsmouth/ Bournemouth as well? --84.92.56.128 (talk) 00:18, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]