Winchester is a small city about 65 miles SW of London. It was a seat of power for many Anglo-Saxon kings, and has had a place of worship there since the 7th century, enlarged to a cathedral in the 11th century.
Winchester Cathedral may have a short, stubby tower, but it has the longest nave (the main body of the building) in Europe. The remains of St Swithun were interred from the Cathedral’s inception, and it became an important place of pilgrimage, until Henry VIII had him and his elaborate shrine removed in 1538 during the Reformation.
The Cathedral suffered more damage in 1642 during the English Civil War, when Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers rampaged throughout the building. They famously broke open mortuary chests and threw the bones of kings through the stained glass windows. The bones have been jumbled ever since, as is the stained glass in the Great West Window when it was restored higgledy-piggledy – a reminder of the fragility of even the greatest works of art.
The Cathedral revealed its own physical fragility in the early 20th century when cracks appeared in the walls, a result of poor foundations and swampy ground. The Cathedral’s saviour was William Walker, a diver who from 1906-12 shored up the waterlogged medieval foundations with thousands of sacks of concrete before new foundations were built. The building’s crypt still regularly floods, and the eastern walls of the cathedral still lean a bit.
More information about the Cathedral here : https://www.winchester-cathedral.org.uk