Flint ruins of a moated palace built for the Bishops of Winchester, wrecked in a Civil War siege after five centuries of use
Open to visitorsan English Heritage site — check opening times and admission before you go
Substantial ruinsruined, but plenty survives above ground
Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen, began building this palace for the Bishops of Winchester in the 1130s, on land the diocese had held since Saxon times. Flint walls and a three-storey tower are most of what survives of his residence, substantial enough that passing kings stayed here on their way through Hampshire. He backed his brother through years of civil war against the rival claimant Matilda; when Matilda’s son took the throne as Henry II in 1154, the new king had the bishop’s palaces torn down within a couple of years, this one included. Henry rebuilt it in the years that followed, once he returned from exile.
Later bishops kept expanding the palace. William of Wykeham remodelled the great hall and living quarters from 1378, and Cardinal Henry Beaufort added a chapel, a taller west tower and new lodgings in the decades after. Henry VIII met the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V here in 1522 to sign a treaty, and in 1554 Mary I met Philip of Spain, her future husband, here before their wedding in Winchester Cathedral.
The palace did not survive the Civil War. A royalist garrison held it under siege until surrendering in 1644, and the buildings burned soon after; the bishops who got the ruin back at the Restoration in 1660 never rebuilt it. Part of the site later became a farm, and the naval commander Admiral Cunningham, who bought a house here before the Second World War and returned to it afterwards, gave the ruins into public care in 1952. The grounds are free to walk, with seasonal opening hours; Bishop’s Waltham, the small town that grew up around the palace gates, is a few minutes’ walk away.
