With a licence more than poetic, the website for Winchester’s Great Hall claims possession of ‘the iconic Round Table – famously linked to the ancient legends of King Arthur and his Knights.’ What the visitor actually sees, hung at the Hall’s western end, is a 13th century recreation, probably made for a tournament held by Edward I.
Originally it was the road that got moved and not the pub that got hidden. The White Horse was a coaching inn and the story goes that the road was straightened in the early nineteenth century, leaving it isolated behind trees and hedges, down a narrow lane.
There are several hills in southern England named for St. Catherine of Alexandria, one of the most venerated saints in the Medieval Church, held in high esteem for her intercessory powers. This one on the edge of Winchester was formed, like all the chalk lands of this region, by the geological processes of the Late Cretaceous epoch.
Aldershot, whatever some may say, has its charms. The (former) premises of J Salter & Sons stand on the High Street, a curio amid the inferno of fast-food joints, pound shops, cash advance merchants and shabby franchises. This business, with its small workshop above the shop, was once the world’s leading manufacturer of polo equipment.