Winchester
Palace was built by Bishop William Gifford in the year
1107 on land belonging to the prior of Bermondsey. Eminent
churchmen, bishops and cardinals, lived in the palace
throughout the medieval period. During the civil war in
the seventeenth century Parliament used the palace as
a prison for royalists before selling the palace in 1649
to Thomas Walker, Gent., for £4380:8:3. Much of
the palace was demolished shortly thereafter. By the eighteenth
century the palace remnants existed in a state of decay
and disrepair.
The
former park of the palace was, in the Regency period,
covered by the Winchester Street, Red Cross Street, Queen
Street, Duke Street, Ewer Street, Worcester Street, and
Castle Street.
Below
are two more views of the palace in the early nineteenth
century.
