Winchester was well situated for trade to make its way to and from the city. Roman roads approached it from all directions and the River Itchen was navigable to Southampton Water. From there continental trade links were accessible.[i]
Winchester had developed along a grid system with the medieval streets being laid out in the late 9th C. The High Street was known as ‘market street’ by around 900 and there was a mint established in the 10th C. After the Norman Conquest a market continued to operate in the High Street. Further market areas were developed on the edge of the city and outside some of the city gates.[ii]
An Anglo-Saxon market had been held in the High Street, as markets from that time could often be found in particularly wide streets. The street followed the line of the old Roman street connecting the west and east gates. From the 11th C in England the churchyard was a favoured venue for markets, which usually took place on Sundays and feast days. However, from the early 13th C a movement against Sunday trading meant that many markets were restricted to weekdays.[iii] At Winchester a large market area was established to the south of the High Street in the Cathedral cemetery from the 12th C. This area reduced after the Black Death of 1348 as extra burial space was required in the churchyard and the trading area was much reduced.[iv]
Thomasesgate Sign
Thomasesgate marked a boundary between the city commercial area and the Cathedral precinct.
By 1449, markets were being held on a Friday and, unusually on a Sunday. These were said to have been held within the city from ‘time immemorial’ (in law this refers to 1189). The mayor bailiffs and citizens wanted to stop the Friday and Sunday markets and instead were granted a Saturday market.[v]
ST GILES FAIR
On the east side of the city stands St Giles Hill. It would have been outside Winchester’s medieval East Gate, which no longer exists. A market charter was granted in 1096 by King William II, which had been procured by Bishop Walkelin (bishop of Winchester from 1070-1098) for a grant of a fair on the vigil, feast and morrow of St Giles.[vi] The location was on the hill where stood the church of St Giles and gave the bishop the rights for rent and judicial jurisdiction. This entitled the bishop to set up a Pavilion court at the fair with justices.[vii]
St Giles (Latin name: Aegidius) is one of the fourteen holy helpers against the Black Death. According to Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend, he was of royal blood, born in Athens which he fled to avoid fame and praise. He made his way to southern France and continued his chosen path as a forest hermit. He was supported a doe which provided milk to him. This deer was one day was chased by hunters. It ran to his hermitage and St Giles was hit by a hunter’s arrow, which was meant for the deer. He was hit in the knee but refused to have it treated and remained disabled for life.[viii] He is the patron saint of the disabled.
St Giles on the Great Screen in the cathedral – The original Great Screen was built in c. 1470-76 but destroyed in 1538. It was replaced in the 19th C.
The opening of the fair, on the eve of the feast of St Giles, started at sunrise and the justices of the bishop’s Pavilion court rode to either the South Gate or the King’s Gate, as they chose. There the mayor, bailiffs, and citizens of the city met them and turned over the keys of the gate. The justices installed at the gate those they had selected to be keepers of the gate. Then they all rode together (justices, mayor, bailiffs and citizens) to the West Gate and the keys of the that gate handed over and a keeper appointed. Also handed over was the city’s ‘wool trone’, a weighing beam with standardised weights. Then a proclamation was made that only goods could be on sale at the fair for the sixteen days it ran, for a radius of seven leagues around the fair site. The penalty was set at the forfeiture of merchandise to the bishop.[ix]
The bishop had custody of the city, deemed as the area seven leagues around the fair site (a league being around three miles). Officials were appointed to deal with the judicial process of the bishop’s court such as the usher, chamberlain and marshal. They could take the pleas before the justices. The marshal would ride through the fair, immediately after sunset and proclaim that each merchant was to close his booth without delay. No one from this proclamation until sunrise the following day should be roaming around the site, except the bishop’s offices and justices. If anyone did disobey, they would find themselves taken to the Pavilion court to pay a fine.[x]
St Giles Fair became one of the most significant international fairs of England. Merchants came from across the country and from the Low Countries, Gascony, Spain, and Ireland. Wool and cloth were likely the most significant trading commodities. However, wine would come from Gascony, the best iron from Spain, madder, brass and textiles from the Low Countries and the Rhineland, woad from Toulouse. Silks and spices were likely coming via Italian agents. In 1110, King Henry I extended the fair by five days, making it an eight-day fair. King Henry II extended it again to sixteen days in 1155. By the late 13th C, it appears the custom was for merchants to descend the hill on the 15th of September and occupy space in the city to trade until the end of the month. The fair declined from the late 13th C.[xi]
By 1240 the four chief fairs of England were: Boston, Winchester, St. Ives in Cambridgeshire and Northampton. The St Giles Fair probably reached its peak under the Angevin dynasty (1154 to 1216: Kings Henry II, Richard I and John). The earliest trade guilds of Winchester were the fullers’ and weavers’ guilds, demonstrating that the cloth and wool trades were the best organized and the most important in the city in the 12th century. It was Winchester wool and looms that produced top-quality English cloth.[xii]
Other Fairs of Winchester
The Prescriptive fairs of St Barnabas, St Mary Magdalen and St Swithun also appear in Winchester. Prescriptive fairs are those arising out of custom rather than by charter. The fair of St Barnabas (11th June) was held possibly near Hyde Abbey. The fair of St Swithun (15th July) may have been in the cathedral cemetery area. The fair of St Nicholas (6th December) is mentioned in records. Also mentioned is the fair of St Mary Magdalen (22nd July) held by the Cathedral Priory on Magdalen Hill Down (east of St Giles) and close to the leper hospital dedicated to St Mary Magdalen. In 1518 the citizens were licensed to hold two additional fairs. One on the Monday and Tuesday in the first week of Lent, and the other on the feast of Edward the Confessor (13th October).[xiii]
THE MARKET CROSS: BUTTER CROSS
A key structure of the medieval market town was the market cross. Market crosses symbolise the Christian moral obligations along with the lordly and royal authority, reminding the population that the market franchise was provided by the lord or townspeople, but ultimately held by the king.[xiv] It is a powerful symbolic structure of the right order of government and civic pride.
Market crosses were often polygonal structures and whilst the Butter Cross at Winchester is not large with a canopy it does have high steps to display goods. Many market crosses were destroyed by the puritans in the Commonwealth period.[xv]
Butter Cross: Statue of Bishop William Wykeham (Bishop of Winchester: 1367 to 1404)
Sir George Gilbert Scott restored Butter Cross in 1865. The small statues at the highest level on 15th C Butter Cross are: The Blessed Virgin, St Lawrence, St Maurice, St Bartholomew, St Peter, St Swithun, and St Thomas. Of the four larger figures only St John the Evangelist dates from the 15th C. The others, Bishop William Wykeham, Lawrence de Anne (an early Mayor of Winchester), and Alfred the Great were part of Gilbert Scott’s restoration.[xvi]
Alfred the Great – an 1865 addition (the Victorians loved Alfred!)
THE PENTICE
The Pentice in the High Street
The Pentice: 16th C Timber-framed houses with a covered walkway. This is possibly the northern boundary of William the Conqueror’s palace. Until the 13th C, this area was used by moneyers and called the Mint. Later in the Middle Ages it became the Drapery, the centre of the city’s cloth trade (from the wall sign at The Pentice).
Butter Cross with the Pentice to its left
Butter Cross likely refers to the dairy products arranged and sold on the steps of the cross. The Pentice walkway starts on the left-hand side of the cross.
CHRISTIAN MERCHANTS
Merchants were often selling luxury items, although there were those selling more basic commodities, as well as pedlars. The luxury items were targeted towards those who gained income from landed properties. This included noblemen and gentry amongst the laity, and the higher clergy such as bishops and abbots. High ranking servants of the Crown and nobility, as well as other high ranking clergy officials, would also be interested in luxuries. This in turn provided opportunities for merchants to accumulate money capital and often they became moneylenders to the crown and nobility.[xvii]
However, Christian merchants were not able to earn interest on loans as this was the sin of usury. But there were other rewards for lending money: preferment, recommendation, increasing their commercial network, privileges, rights and advising the king on economic policy.
JEWS IN WINCHESTER
William the Conqueror invited Jewish merchants from Rouen in France to England in 1070 with the idea of boosting the economy. Christians were not able to lend money for interest as usury was a sin, but this was not forbidden by Jewish law. This changed in 1275 as usury was made illegal in general and the work that Jews could undertake was limited.[xviii]
However, when Jews could legally lend money to earn interest, some had opportunities to gain wealth. They congregated in cities in specific areas. From the late 12th C all Jewish activities had to be recorded in chests known as archae. Jews began to gather in towns which housed archae. Winchester was one of these cities, becoming a key centre for Jewish administrative matters in England.[xix]
Jews lived in Winchester from at least 1148, and in the 13th C the Jewish community in the city was one of the most important in England.[xx] The Jewish quarter was in the heart of the city (present day Jewry Street). St Giles Fair brought both Christian and Jewish traders to the city.
Life was not always peaceful for Jews. There were a series of blood libel claims against the Jewish community in the 1220s and 1230s. Blood libel is false accusations of Jews murdering Christians to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals. This likely caused the hanging of Abraham Pinch at Winchester (the community’s leader) in front of the synagogue.[xxi]
John Leland, from his description of his journey of England and Wales (c. 1538 to 1543), mentions the Jewish area in Winchester:
The street which leads from the High Street to North Gate is called the Jury, because Jews lived there and had their synagogue there. The staple houses for wool lay in a back street between the West Gate and North Gate.[xxii]
A Remarkable Jewish Woman: Licoricia
Statue of Licoricia & her son Asher in Jewry Street
Licoricia of Winchester (early 13th century to 1277) was a remarkable woman of the 13th C. She rose to become the most prominent female Jewish financier in medieval England. Her first husband, Abraham died in the late 1220s, and she inherited his wealth and expended her business network. By the end of the 1230s she was one of the wealthiest moneylenders in Winchester.[xxiii]
Licoricia married David of Oxford in 1242, one of the richest Jews in England. The had a son, Asher, born in c.1242. She had three sons and a daughter from her first marriage. David died two years later. Upon his death Licoricia was imprisoned in the Tower of London to prevent her hiding the vast wealth she and David had accumulated. She paid 5,000 marks to repurchase all debts owed to David. King Henry III used 4,000 marks of this levy to build a new shrine to Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. Licorica was also required to make a substantial contribution to the shrine of £2,500 (nearly £4 million today[xxiv]).[xxv]
Licoricia continued to expand her business after David’s death. Her client network extended across the country included landowners, other Jews, and farmers, as well as members of the royal family, the nobility and the Church. She did business with Henry III directly whenever his court was in Winchester.[xxvi]
She died in Winchester in 1277. She was murdered, along with her Christian maid, Alice of Bicton. The motivation for her murder may have been the admission of her son Benedict to a guild in 1268. He was the only Jew to be accepted into a guild and it caused rioting. The culprits of her murder were never brought to justice.[xxvii]
Licoricia survived the onslaught of Simon de Montfort Younger when he ransacked the Jewish quarter in 1265 in the Siege of Winchester. Many Jews were murdered and their businesses raided and destroyed. On the 18th of July 1290 Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, expelling all Jews from England. It would take until the time of Oliver Cromwell for Jews to be officially tolerated again.[xxviii]
NOTES
[i] ‘Winchester: Introduction’, in A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 5, ed. William Page (London, 1912), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol5/pp1-9 [accessed 5 March 2025].
[ii] Counties and Wales: Winchester’, Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516, (Centre for Metropolitan History), < https://archives.history.ac.uk/gazetteer/gazweb2.html> [accessed 10 February 2025].
[iii] Kathryn A. Morrison, English Shops and Shopping (New Haven & London: Yale University Press in association with English Heritage, 2003; repr. 2004), pp. 7-8.
[iv] ‘Counties and Wales: Winchester’, Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516.
[v] ‘Counties and Wales: Winchester’, Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516.
[vi] ‘Winchester: Fairs and trades’, in A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 5, ed. William Page (London, 1912), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol5/pp36-44 [accessed 10 February 2025].
[vii] G.W. Kitchin, ed. A Charter of Edward the Third Confirming and Enlarging the Privileges of St. Giles Fair, Winchester, A.D. 1349, Hampshire Record Society, vol.6, pt. 2 (1886), pp. 26-42.
[viii] Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 533-535.
[ix] G.W. Kitchen, pp. 26-42.
[x] G.W. Kitchen, pp. 26-42.
[xi] ‘Winchester: Fairs and trades’, in A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 5.
[xii] ‘Winchester: Fairs and trades’, in A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 5.
[xiii] ‘Counties and Wales: Winchester’, Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516.
[xiv] John S. Lee, ‘The functions and fortunes of English small towns at the close of the middle ages: evidence from John Leland’s “Itinerary”’, Urban History, May 2010, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Cambridge University Press), pp. 3-25, < https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44614246.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A1bea7548bcc8ef098640611db09a23d3&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&initiator=&acceptTC=1> [accessed 26 February 2025].
[xv] Edward Green, ‘Stone Crosses’, www.buildingconservation.com, < https://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/stone-crosses/stone-crosses.htm> [accessed 26 February 2026].
[xvi] ‘About Buttercross’, Visit Winchester, (Winchester City Council), < https://www.visitwinchester.co.uk/business-directory/buttercross> [accessed 26 February 2025].
[xvii] R. H. Hilton, ‘Medieval Market Towns and Simple Commodity Production’, Past & Present, No. 109, (Oxford University Press, Nov. 1985), pp. 3-23 < https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/650607.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A3d34fcb51bb1babe105c7a66715b140f&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&initiator=&acceptTC=1> [accessed 26 February 2025].
[xviii] Medieval Jewish Winchester, (Winchester: University of Winchester, 2022), pp. 4-5.
[xix] Medieval Jewish Winchester, (Winchester: University of Winchester, 2022), p. 2.
[xx] Medieval Jewish Winchester, (Winchester: University of Winchester, 2022), p. 2.
[xxi] Medieval Jewish Winchester, (Winchester: University of Winchester, 2022), pp. 2-7.
[xxii] John Chandler, John Leland’s Itinerary Travels in Tudor England (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1993), p. 201.
[xxiii] Hannah Meyer, ‘Licoricia of Winchester (d. 1277)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, online edn, Jul 2021, <https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.369088> [accessed 7 March 2025].
[xxiv] ‘Inflation calculator’, Bank of England, < https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator> [accessed: 24 February 2025].
[xxv] Hannah Meyer, ‘Licoricia of Winchester (d. 1277)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[xxvi] Hannah Meyer, ‘Licoricia of Winchester (d. 1277)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[xxvii] Hannah Meyer, ‘Licoricia of Winchester (d. 1277)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[xxviii] Medieval Jewish Winchester, (Winchester: University of Winchester, 2022), p. 3.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barlow, Frank, ‘Winchester in the Early Middles Ages: An Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday’, Winchester Studies, Issue 1, ed. Martin Biddle (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976)
Chandler, John, John Leland’s Itinerary Travels in Tudor England, (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1993)
Counties and Wales: Winchester’, Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516, (Centre for Metropolitan History), < https://archives.history.ac.uk/gazetteer/gazweb2.html> [accessed 10 February 2025]
de Voragine, Jacobus, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012)
Green, Edward, ‘Stone Crosses’, www.buildingconservation.com, < https://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/stone-crosses/stone-crosses.htm> [accessed 26 February 2026]
Hilton, R.H., ‘Medieval Market Towns and Simple Commodity Production’, Past & Present, No. 109, (Oxford University Press, Nov. 1985), pp. 3-23 < https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/650607.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A3d34fcb51bb1babe105c7a66715b140f&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&initiator=&acceptTC=1> [accessed 26 February 2025]
Kitchin, G.W., ed. A Charter of Edward the Third Confirming and Enlarging the Privileges of St. Giles Fair, Winchester, A.D. 1349, Hampshire Record Society, vol.6, pt. 2 (1886), pp. 26-42
Meyer, Hannah, ‘Licoricia of Winchester (d. 1277)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, online edn, Jul 2021, <https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.369088> [accessed 7 March 2025]
Morrison, Kathryn A., English Shops and Shopping (New Haven & London: Yale University Press in association with English Heritage, 2003; repr. 2004
University of Winchester, Medieval Jewish Winchester, (Winchester: University of Winchester, 2022)
‘Winchester: Fairs and trades’, in A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 5, ed. William Page (London, 1912), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol5/pp36-44 [accessed 10 February 2025]
‘Winchester: Introduction’, in A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 5, ed. William Page (London, 1912), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol5/pp1-9 [accessed 5 March 2025]