The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Winchester’s unbeatable gift for St Valentine’s day
As a Valentine’s gift it is impossible to beat one given by Queen Emma, the widow of King Canute. In 1042 she gave the head of St Valentine to the New Minster in Winchester.
Her son Harthacanute had also just died, after reigning as king of England for less than two years. Her pious act in donating a notable relic to the abbey, which had been founded in 901, was intended to benefit Harthacanute’s soul.
St Valentine was venerated as a martyr of the 3rd century. Not much is known of him. In fact accounts seem to identify two martyrs of the name. This may be as well, since, in addition to Queen Emma’s head, another is preserved at the ancient church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome. It has a lovely tall campanile, through the arched storeys of which you can see the blue sky.
In the 18th century a Baroque facade in the latest style was added to the church, but that was taken off again at the end of the 19th century, and you’d hardly know the restored facade wasn’t centuries older. Anyway, in a reliquary there rests St Valentine’s skull, crowned with flowers.
Winchester has lost its own. When a new Norman cathedral was built by William the Conqueror, the New Minster’s monks made a foundation at nearby
Hyde. Alfred the Great’s body was transferred there, as was St Valentine’s head.
Hardly 400 years went by before Henry VIII dissolved all the monasteries and
Hyde Abbey was left empty, its stones quarried for new building. The remains of the church erected by the abbey for townspeople survives today as St Bartholomew’s. It’s a short walk from Winchester station (and open on Sunday mornings). It still possesses something worth seeing.
This is a collection of five 12th-century stone capitals that topped the columns of the Norman cloister of Hyde Abbey. The carving is accomplished, symmetrical and creative. Such capitals are rare in England, where no Romanesque cloister survives. In France and Spain it is no surprise to stumble across one – at
Moissac, say, or Soria.
As you walk north up Hyde Street from Swan Lane, the buildings improve. Around the little metal sign for St Bartholomew’s (its point bent by some heavy goods vehicle) a cluster of buildings of mellow brick, stone and flint are listed as of special historic and architectural interest. Among these, two doors up from the Hyde Tavern, I was surprised to find that the parish hall had just been sold by the parochial church council of St Bartholomew’s to be used as a mosque.
Winchester Muslim Cultural Association bid £700,000 for it. The parochial church council said it was delighted that the hall would still be available for community use. It wants to spend the sale money on making space in the church more flexible for wider use. But Rev Karen Kousseff, the rector of St Bartholomew’s, told the Hampshire Chronicle: “The hall used to be used a lot for parties, gatherings and activities organised by the church but that is dwindling now. It’s fallen off a lot in the four years I’ve been here.”
This year St Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, so devout lovers had better book a vegetarian dinner.
I found out about St Valentines’ head from a new book of similarly enticing relics of England’s Christian history in Highways and
Byways by the learned Fr Nicholas Schofield, the archivist of the Archdiocese of Westminster in addition to looking after 800 parishioners of a church at Uxbridge hedged about by a dual carriageway and shopping centre. I look forward to other excursions.