Church Heritage Record 641362

The church of St Swithun-upon-Kingsgate is situated on the first floor level and is accessed through the reconstructed stairway on the north-west corner of the gate. The plan is rectangular in form, measuring 40 feet from east to west and 16 feet from north to south, with no internal divisions except the doorway connecting to the landing and the stairs. At the east is a modern window, with stained glass representing Christ standing at the door; at the west is a three-light window; on the south side are two, square-headed, two-light windows, with the one at the west-end containing a small piscine on the sill; and on the north are two, cinquefoiled, two-light windows. Along the north wall is a small Tudor-arched niche and at the west end is an octagonal paneled-font, half of which is built into a recess in the wall. There is an original niche on the east end of the south wall.

12m x 5m

The King’s Gate is first mentioned in the 1148 survey of the Winton Domesday. In a record for tenement 928, the entry reads: ‘in the gate of King’s Gate [Chingate] the sacristan receives 15 d’. This is the only surviving record of the gate before the end of the twelfth century, when the gate is referred to as ‘kinggeshiate’ in the 1198 Feet of Fines. The gate is later listed as ‘Kingate’ in the 1210-11 Pipe Rolls. The following record to the gate is found in the 1237-42 Close Rolls; here, ‘Kinghete’ is described as one of two gates along the city wall undergoing restoration. In the Annales de Wintonia, a record for 1264 describes the uprising of the citizens of Winchester and the extent of the damage inflicted on ‘Kingate and the Church of St Swithun above’ [Kingate cum ecclesia Sancti Swythuni supra]. The next document record is a settlement from 1266 concerning the late war [tempore proxime guerre]; the agreement sets out the liabilities of ‘Prior Valentine’ and the ‘Commonality of the city of Winchester’ for the ‘custody, upkeep, and repair, of Southgate and Kyngate’. This composition was subsequently recorded in a late-thirteenth-century dossier known as the Black Book of Winchester, as well as in two editions of the Chartulary of St. Swithun. The gate is then referred to again as the Church, or ‘Capella’, of ‘Saint Swithun above Kingyate’ [Capella Sancti Swythuni supra Kingyate] in ‘A List of the Churches and Chapels in The Diocese of Winchester’, compiled c. 1270 for the Registrum Johannis de Pontissara. In the fourteenth century documentary records continued to make reference to the gate and church: the Obedientiary Rolls 1280-1527 contains an entry for 1337, which records a payment made to a carpenter for the repairs on the ‘Church of Kyngate’; the Register of William of Wykeham contains entries for 1368, 1370 and 1384, which draw attention to the ‘church of Kyngate’ [ecclesie de Kyngate]; two other entries for 1377 and 1390 refer to the ‘church above Kyngate’ [ecclesia super Kyngate] and ‘St. Swithun-over-Kyngate’. The earliest record from the fifteenth century, also included in the Black Book of Winchester, is an order for the restoration of the city walls and ‘the gate named ‘Kingisgate’ in 1407. The building was identified again in 1485 as the ‘Church of Kyngegate’ [Ecclesiae de Kyngegate] in the Obedientiary Rolls 1280-1527.

The documentary records written in first half of the sixteenth-century continued to make reference to the function of the building: a deed written in 1520 confirmed the ‘wardship of the gate near the Priory called ‘Kyngate’; the Valor Ecclesiasticus from 1535 recorded individual entries for the valuation of the ‘Rectoria Kyngeyate’, the ‘Rectori de Kyngesgate’ and ‘Kyngegate’; and the Registra Stephani Gardnier et Johannis Poynet included the ‘Church of Kyngeyate’ [Ecclesia de Kyngeyate] in a list of the churches in the deanery of Winchester in 1536. The building was later recorded in the 1543 Ecclesiastical Visitation of Hampshire as ‘church of Kyngisyate’ [Ecclesia de Kyngisyate], before two separate accounts in the Transactions from The Municipal of Winchester documented the appointment of a porter to ‘King’s Gate’ in 1593 and 1603. The earliest surviving depiction of the ‘King’s Gate’ is shown in John Speed’s Map of Hampshire, published 1611. A similar representation of the ‘Porte du Roy’ was carried out by an unknown artist in the Plan de Winchester, drawn c. 1620. Three additional documents produced in the first half of the seventeenth-century confirm the presence of the church and gate: the Register of St Swithin’s records ‘St Swithins upon kingsgate’ in 1634 and 1635; John Trussell recalls the history of the ‘Kingsgate’ in The Origin of Cities, published c. 1636, as well as the use of ‘St. Swithuns uppon Kingsgate’ as a place for devotion in Touchstone of Tradition, published 1647. In the second half of the century two records drew attention to the state and repairs of the building: an Account of the state of the churches in Winchester described the ruinous condition of ‘St. Swithin’ in 1660,[24] before the Church Warden Accounts recorded a payment for the ‘stons from Wollsey’ during the building restoration in 1677.

From the eighteenth century onwards written accounts continued to document the condition of the church and gate: an passage in the Proceeding of Court of Quarter Sessions records an appeal for the restoration of the ‘Gateway under Kingsgate’ in 1713; a record from the Seventh Ledge Book confirms the employment of a porter for the ‘gate called Kingsgate’ in 1716; and two listings from 1736 and 1738 in the Visitation Returns refer to the condition of ‘St. Swithuns’ as ‘well and in Good Repair’. The church was mentioned again in 1769, when antiquarian Richard Gough noted the ‘Kingsgate’ was ‘once used as a chapel’. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the building was recorded in a variety of forms: a pencil sketch drawn c.1820 depicted ‘King’s Gate and St Swithun’s over it’, before the Charity Commissioner’s Report recorded a payment to the ‘Keeper of Kingsgate’ in c. 1824; the Mayor of Winchester Papers recorded an incentive to undertake repairs on ‘Kingsgate’ in 1845; the Proceedings of The Archaeological Institute relate how ‘Kingsgate and little St. Swithun’s Church’ had been restored in ‘a manner creditable to the corporation’ in 1846; an article in the Hampshire Chronicle reported which construction works were undertaken at the ‘Little church of St. Swithun-upon-Kingsgate’ in 1846; and the Winchester Quarterly Record made a note of the intention of the parish council to carry out further restorations at the ‘church over Kingsgate’ in 1853. Individual entries in the Vestry Minutes Book for the years 1862, 1863, 1866, 1867 and 1870 reveal how alterations on the church had been procured, whilst a letter dated 1878 demonstrates the parish council was not prepared to repair the city walls. The churchwardens later commissioned an architectural survey of ‘S. Swithun’s Church’ to John Coulson in 1878, before a letter from the Rector dated 1881 in the Vestry Minutes Book reiterated that the parish was not responsible for the ‘Repairs of the Wall under Kingsgate’. An article in the Hampshire Chronicle made the last reference to a ‘Keeper of Kingsgate’ in 1882.

Records written around the turn of the twentieth century demonstrate the nature of the repairs inside the church: the St Swithun Faculty Paper from 1898 gave an estimate cost for the proposed works; an Omnibus Faculty from 1899 authorized the removal of the ‘present pupil and desk’; amongst a set of entries in the Vestry Minute Book, one entry highlighted ‘problems’ related to the ‘shaking of the church’ in 1902; the remaining entries correspond to repairs undertaken in 1901, 1903, 1911 and 1914. In 1930, the London Gazette recorded the union of ‘Saint Michael with Saint Swithun’. The Restoration Appeal produced c. 1950 stated the need of repairs on ‘St. Swithun upon Kingsgate’. The St Michael’s Minutes from 1953, 1956 and 1961, outlined the scope of the alterations. Supplementary evidence from 1953-1954, including a letter from ‘The City Engineer’, together with an estimate cost for the ‘proposed Repairs and Alterations’ and a report on ‘St Swithun’s Church’ from the General Purposes Committee, expand on these schemes. The progression of the works in 1957-1958 is recorded in letters from ‘The City Engineer’, a historical report of ‘Kingsgate Arch’, as well as in minutes from the Council Minutes Book and the General Purposes Committee. In 1958, the Southern Daily Echo announced the completion of the restoration of the ‘old gateway with a little church over it’, before records from 1971 in the St Lawrence Parish Records documented a request for ‘urgent repairs to the South elevation’ of the building.

The lower section of the gate is tripartite in its arrangement; at its centre is a two-centre pointed archway, currently restricted to vehicles by bollards, with two pedestrian round archways by the sides. The west passage is flanked by a brick wall with a doorway leading into the church Vestry. The east passage is flanked by a small bookshop occupying the space beneath the church. On the north wall of the shop there is a two-light stone window at eye-level facing straight onto St Swithun Street. Along the upper section of the north front are two two-light windows, corresponding in form to the designs seen from inside the church. Supported on the timber window lentils and the stone-and-flint wall parapet is a steep-pitch, tile-clad, gable roof. On the north-west corner of the gate is a timber pitched-roof stairway, which is partly rendered and partly cladded with tiles, and a timber-clad bell turret almost in level with the ridge of the roof. There are three small windows on the external wall of the stairs facing east.