For the past six years Hyde900 has organised annual community excavations in the private gardens of residents of this area of Winchester, site of the claustral buildings of one of England’s foremost abbeys, built by order of Henry I as a successor to Winchester’s Anglo-Saxon New Minster, burial place of King Alfred and his family.
These excavations, monitored of course by professional archaeologists, continue a series of investigations that have been undertaken on the abbey site since 1982, including a previous community project in 1995-9, during the final year of which the east end of the abbey church was excavated. The current Hyde900 project is mainly located in the area of the monastic cloister and the buildings surrounding it.
Dr John Crook, architectural historian and archaeological consultant, is the historical architectural advisor for the Hyde900 community project. In his illustrated talk he will explain how the excavations allow us to understand more fully the extent of the church, and the layout of the monks’ domestic accommodation, which was centred around a cloister. Elements of the finely decorated cloister arcade were amongst the first major discoveries in April 2017, and many important finds have been made since then, some of which will be on display during the Open Days.
St Bartholomew's Church, King Alfred Place, Hyde, Winchester, Hampshire, SO237DF
