Gaming sparkle brings the 9th century to life in Winchester

I’m not much of a gamer. I love the concept of immersing myself as a character in a fantasy world, but my extreme impatience with the performance of repetitive tasks means I never manage to get past the first challenge. No matter how intrigued I am by the story, I can never manage to sail my pirate ship out of the bay, get my knight over the first bandit-infested bridge, or get my Hobbits beyond The Shire. That hasn’t stopped me, however, from having a huge admiration for the Assassin’s Creed franchise. 

The makers’ attention to historical detail and storytelling intrigues me. I’ve stumbled across them a couple of times in recent sightseeing: first as a display room within the Ashmolean’s excellent exhibition on ancient Knossos, and again as I was preparing to visit Monteriggione in Tuscany. The picturesque Italian fortress is the setting for the second game in the series. Ancient Crete turns up in the 11th. Those connections with my life were almost accidental. Now gaming company Ubisoft has made a full foray into the world of tourism, creating 878 AD, an immersive Anglo-Saxon experience in my local cathedral town of Winchester. They worked in partnership with the Hampshire Cultural Trust and Sugar Creative. 

While I was slightly disappointed with my visit … more on the drawbacks later … overall I think this is a magnificent way to get people excited about history. Particularly one of England’s lesser-known time periods. I’d love to see similar attractions spreading across the country. It’s a particularly good introduction for children; I’d start here with any visitor to Winchester under 18.

It’s also a brilliant use of the excess retail space that’s plaguing most town centres in the UK. Functionally, it’s simply a bit of set design and video projection, some computer screens and display cases, information boards and a few costumed hosts injected into vacant space in a modern shopping mall. With the actual history sprawling just outside, 878 AD doesn’t need to be in a fancy building. It gives people an introduction and then sends them off with an interactive app to explore the reality.

The “experience” invitees you to insert yourself into the world of King Alfred and his battles against the Vikings. You join him after he’s hidden in the marshes and burned those pesky cakes (something many people seem to remember even if they don’t have a clue about the rest of his story) but before the climactic Battle of Edington in May of 878 (something few beyond fans of The Last Kingdom will know about). The citizens of Winchester are waiting anxiously for news, having waved most of their able-bodied men away.

That set-up creates an excellent excuse to then wander around Anglo-Saxon Winchester, learning about the people, their lives and the specifics of the city at the time. At one end of the long gallery two large walls form a corner onto which panning shots of the city from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla run. The graphics are both impressive and built with respectable amounts of historic research. (A small side gallery offers screens where you can explore details of how they built the game itself.) Other digital displays use the graphics as a starting point to explore different aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture. There are display cases with some real historical artefacts but it’s mostly re-creations.

Strip away the fiction of time travel and it’s a fairly straightforward introduction to the Anglo-Saxons. If you want to see proper “stuff” from the time period, you’d be better served getting to the British Museum to stare down the helmet from the Sutton Hoo burial ship and the other goodies in Room 41. But it’s fun, and the fiction of the pre-battle tension gives the displays a relevance you’d miss if you just walked into a museum.

You also have the role-playing support staff to help interpret while keeping up the fiction. They’re very good at staying in character. Ask them about the Romans, for example, and they’ll explain that while there are ruins scattered about town that they often plunder for building material, few outside the nobility know much about the people who left them. There are regular story telling sessions where staff members … aka 9th century residents of Winchester … dive deeper into the action and get the audience involved. Inviting all the children to form a shield wall, complete with pint-sized shields, is an inspired way to get them having fun while teaching a real lesson about how battles of the time were fought. 

You end up in a small theatre where the film catches you up on the results at Edington. A resounding success for Alfred, his Viking opponent agreeing to convert to Christianity and respect borders, and the cornerstone of a united England laid. It’s well done. Patriotic and inspiring without being corny, informative enough so even the most historically ignorant can’t leave without grasping why there’s a bloody huge statue of Alfred at the top of the High Street.

But that’s only half of your experience. From here you download an app and hit the streets. There are games to play and puzzles to solve, along with excellent information about what you’re looking at. I was particularly fond of the bits where your phone super-imposes a graphic (from the game, naturally) of what was there in the 9th century over what you’re looking at today. The app takes you on a circular walk that will be familiar to locals, but offers new perspectives. It has the potential to elevate what you experienced in the mall into something really great. If your tech works.

One suspects that the game designers, used to the snazzy hardware and network set-ups of the average Assassin’s Creed player, didn’t think hard enough about the mobile experience. The WiFi inside 878 AD and the shopping mall that houses it isn’t good enough for easy downloads; only one of our group of three managed to get the app onto her phone. But her coverage then wasn’t good enough to follow us around the suggested route. After multiple frustrations we finally ended up at the cathedral when the app stubbornly insisted we were at the Bishop’s Palace. The mobile experience only works if you’re standing where the app wants you to be. So we gave up. This is one of those tickets that’s good for a year, however, so I downloaded the app onto my own phone once I got home and plan to try it again sometime in the near future.

So … five stars for fun, for kid appeal and for design. What were the drawbacks, other than tech?

If you have a basic grounding in the Anglo-Saxons already, you’re not going to learn much. And, honestly, I’m not talking about people who’d make 9th century England their specialist subject on Mastermind. If you watched The Last Kingdom and had a brief nose around the Anglo-Saxon galleries at either the British Museum or the Ashmolean, everything here is going to be familiar territory.

One of my companions, who is unusually well-versed on the topic, was particularly irked that almost all of the illustrated figures depicted in the displays were swarthy brunettes, looking more like stereotypical Southern Europeans than the famously broad, blonde and Germanic Angles and Saxons. I hadn’t noticed it but once he pointed it out it was quite irritating. All we could think of was that ethnically Vikings and Anglo-Saxons wouldn’t have looked that different, but this is entertainment, so did they alter the look of the latter to create dramatic contrast? All those long dead Aelfstans, Æðelfriðs and Eadwulfs must be rolling in their graves. 

My biggest frustration, however, is that the marketing probably promised more than 878 AD delivered. Words like “experience” and “digital”, combined with the creativity of Ubisoft and some great graphics in their ad campaign left me expecting something a lot more high tech. There were a lot more text-heavy information panels than I was expecting from the positioning. I thought I might be donning a virtual reality headset, walking through projections or at least getting to play some gamified learning experiences. That may be the intention of the app, but it’s certainly not what you get inside part one. 

It is, however, early days. My post-visit research suggests this was a trial, and success could lead to bigger and better things. The experience has won creative and tourism awards. There was a steady stream of people coming through on the wet Sunday we decided to check it out. As someone who’s worked in Tech for my whole career, I know the high-end experience I imagined would have cost many times more than what they stood up here. Maybe something more sophisticated is to come. I’d love to see Winchester end up with an Anglo-Saxon version of the Jorvik Viking Experience in York.

Meanwhile, if I win the lottery I will be the benefactor behind a Jane Austen experience to fill up some retail space in the Basingstoke’s struggling Festival Place. Though I’m not sure there’s a logical computer gaming partner for that one. Assassin’s Creed: The Bennet Sisters seems unlikely. But if Pride and Prejudice with Zombies can work, who knows?

Worcester proves it’s England’s cathedral cities increasingly winning my heart over London

I may not be tired of London, but these days London certainly tires me out. 

So, with apologies to Dr Johnson, my preferences these are often turning towards our cathedral cities. Like London, they have rich cultural heritage, great architecture, theatres and museums. Yet they are a lot less crowded. Eminently walkable, they are full of charm with a fair few independent shops and restaurants. Many can boast flourishing farmer’s markets packed with local providers and craftspeople. Most avoided both the bomb damage of WWII and the hyper-growth of the late 20th century. So while few are entirely free of ugly 20th century buildings, they tend to have avoided the characterless modernity that blights large swathes of the capital. (Portsmouth is a sad exception.) Overall, the pace is slower and the people friendlier. While I love the staggering diversity of the megalopolis that is London, I am also an immigrant who moved here because I loved all that was traditionally English. You’re more likely to find that today in the cathedral cities than in London, which probably has more in common with New York or Hong Kong than York or Wells.

The fact that all roads lead to London, however, means that many of these charming outposts are on rail lines that can get you to the capital efficiently enough for the occasional commute. Is it any wonder that people whose work gives them the flexibility are moving to these cities, or that real estate in Winchester … our local cathedral city … now features prices on par with London?

Worcester offers an excellent example of the charms of one of these cathedral cities. It lies on the River Severn, about an hour southwest of Birmingham. Some cities turn their backs on their rivers. Others build right up to them until they seem no more than a canal cutting through skyscrapers. In Worcester, green spaces along the riverfront have been zealously protected. The racecourse. The cricket club. A verdant riverwalk. Look westward over the river with Worcester at your back and the Malvern Hills rear up from gentle agricultural plains, offering spectacular views and some gorgeous sunsets. It is, in short, a tremendously attractive place to settle; something people had already figured out centuries before the Romans established their river crossing and street plans here.

If “things you know about Worcester” turns up on Pointless, there are three things you’ll immediately want to avoid.

First, national favourite composer Edward Elgar was born here and gets a nod in statues, monuments, street and building names across the city. So proud are they of the local boy that I’m surprised, frankly, they don’t have Land of Hope and Glory wafting out from speakers in the town centre. Next, Messers Lea and Perrins created their famous Worcestershire sauce here and, though now part of the global behemoth Kraft Heinz, it’s still manufactured in the local factory. Bloody Mary drinkers everywhere owe Worcester a debt of gratitude. 

And then there’s the Civil War. The Battle of Worcester in 1651 was the Royalists’ last stand before nine years of a relatively unchallenged, grim, Godly republic. It’s the one after which the young King Charles II hid in an apple tree and escaped disguised as a lady’s servant. Depictions of those events have been glorified on stage and screen, page and canvas, ever since. There’s even a holiday, Oak Apple Day, celebrated on 29 May.

Delightful as these things are, you’re probably not going to move to Worcester for any of them. You’ll be lured, as our friends were, by a ring of gracious suburbs within walking distance of the town centre, its train stations with easy access to London and Birmingham, and charming properties for a fraction of the cost per square foot of the equivalent in London.

ARCHITECTURALLY BLESSED

The Industrial Revolution was very kind to Worcester, flooding cash into town but on a more manageable, less brutal scale than nearby Birmingham. There’s a wealth of very pretty Regency and early Victorian architecture here, some of it on beautiful green squares. I’m surprised the film industry hasn’t discovered it as a shoot location for historical dramas. As you come into the town centre you’ll find a delightful mix of architecture, from small 19th century industrial buildings now put to modern uses (microbrewery, yoga studio…) to lavish Edwardian public buildings to some art deco gems. The Guildhall is a spectacular early Georgian building that proclaims the city’s Royalist creds with statues of Charles I and II on either side of the door. The sculptor was either very bad, or had never seen a portrait of either man, but that almost adds to the charm. 

Most exciting, and most radically different from London, is a generous sprinkling of surviving Medieval architecture. It’s mostly half-timbered, and concentrated around Friar Street. 

The historic centre offers a tempting range of traditional pubs. We spent some time in The Cardinal’s Hat, occupying an early Georgian building and still operating on that early model of a warren of small rooms. (Much like London’s Cheddar Cheese in Fleet Street.) Local brews, an impressive range of gins, friendly staff, gleaming woodwork, stacks of board games, no canned music, no fruit machines, dogs welcome. I want to go back. 

Worcester didn’t escape the blight of ugly modern architecture completely. Like any English city there are sad concrete blocks that make you shake your head in grim disbelief at the modernist vandals who thought brutalist lines, concrete and lack of ornament could bring joy. But even here Worcester works hard to turn things to its advantage, fostering a civic murals scheme that gives some interest and beauty to the unlovely. 

The 21st century has ushered in more architectural hope, with a combination of sensitive renovations and a development across from the cathedral that gives us a modern take on a town square with a range of restaurants and social spots. According to our hosts it’s heaving most weekends and is a big draw for the students at university here.

The cathedral is the star sight in town for lovers of history and architecture, though it would be easy to miss. It sits just below the crest of the hill the city centre occupies, on the southwest side. If you’re approaching from the west and crossing over the Severn it would dominate your initial views of Worcester. These days, however, almost everyone is coming from the east. Walking through town from this direction you won’t spot the cathedral until you’re practically on top of it. The lack of a spire adds to its low profile.

CLASSIC CATHEDRAL

Unusually for a British cathedral of this size and quality they don’t force the admissions fee on you. Donation points are all over the building and I found my visit well worth a contribution. Typically, it’s an amalgamation of styles: started in the late 7th century, bits of Romanesque architecture still on show, but mostly layers of various gothic periods with some sensitive renovation by the Victorians. (Notably directed by George Gilbert Scott, most famous for the Albert Memorial.) Thus, despite some horrific destruction by hammer-wielding reformers in the Reformation and the Civil War, there’s a lot of beauty here to appreciate.

Most notable is the tomb of King John, perennial winner of “worst king” competitions and one of the few English monarchs not to be buried amongst other rulers. Brother Richard the Lionheart and their formidable parents Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine sleep almost 600 miles away in Fontevraud, France. Given their toxic relationships, it’s probably not far enough.

The monument is far more beautiful than the man’s reputation: he lies full-length, regal and crowned, saints at each shoulder, the once-painted stone now a gleaming black, atop a grand but restrained plinth decorated with Plantagenet crests. He is, naturally, right in front of the high altar. It’s good to be king. All is not normal in the afterlife, however. The lion at his feet is biting the tip of his sword. I have never seen this before on a medieval tomb, and there’s no documented evidence to say why. But scholars’ best guess is that it’s the artists’ subtle commentary showing England (the lion) biting back over John’s brutal reign.

Though the most prestigious, John is just one of a beautiful collection of tombs in the cathedral. Prince Arthur, whose early death ushered in Henry VIII, lies in a mortuary chapel just to the right of the altar, still beautiful despite the way iconoclasts of old chiselled away saints’ faces. Other chapels bristle with the spires and flourishes of the high gothic. Several Medieval tombs still have their lifelike painting scheme, most notably the Beauchamps where the lady lying beside her knight in shining armour uses a black swan as a pillow. 

There’s also a lovely enclosed cloister and an atmospheric Romanesque crypt. Walk around to the west side, where the main (now unused) entrance is, and you’ll be treated to a gorgeous view of the river with pleasant walks beside it. 

The other sightseeing blockbuster in town is The Commandery, a collection of listed buildings now used as a museum covering the history of the city but concentrating primarily on the Civil War. Sadly it’s closed on Monday, which was my free day in town, so it will need to wait until a future visit. Of which I’m confident there will be plenty.

It’s always a wrench when close friends move away. The upside is that you get to go visit them. This blog would be without its many entries on Luxembourg and the area around Lake Annecy if it weren’t for the migration of some dear friends. And now others, just as close, will bring that awareness to the charming cathedral city of Worcester. I’m going to miss having them close at hand, but the compensations of their new home town are compelling.