Winchester

In one of the aisles of the Cathedral is a slab to Jane Austen. Several years after her death one of the vergers asked who was this lady that all the visitors came to pay homage to.

Public school located in the city of Winchester, founded by William of Whykeham. Attended by around 700 pupils today, most of whom board full-time. Currently one of the most expensive schools in England, it also has the some of the best A level results in the country. Its current headmaster (principal to Americans) is Nicholas Tate. It plays Winchester college football.

Winchester is an extraordinary place to learn; I will leave this year having spent five years both loving and hating it. On one side it offers the best education money can buy: not just exams and tests but the freedom to work at your own pace and to explore concepts that interest you, taught by some of the best teachers in the country. On the other it suffers from the problem that it continues to perpetuate a stereotype rich kid attitude,is not co-ed, and thus screws up many people's ability to relate to the opposite sex, and it suffers from the universal school problem that intellectuals are unappreciated when compared to sportsmen. For £18,000 it represents the best chance of getting into an Oxbridge college of almost anywhere in the UK, but it will affect you for the rest of your life.

Winchester n.

Informal generic term for sealed-enclosure magnetic-disk drives in which the read-write head planes over the disk surface on an air cushion. There is a legend that the name arose because the original 1973 engineering prototype for what later became the IBM 3340 featured two 30-megabyte volumes; 30-30 became `Winchester' when somebody noticed the similarity to the common term for a famous Winchester rifle (in the latter, the first 30 referred to caliber and the second to the grain weight of the charge). (It is sometimes incorrectly claimed that Winchester was the laboratory in which the technology was developed.)

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

The Cathedral . This is very pretty. The architecture is simple and aesthetically pleasing, the building is well heated and tourist-friendly. As worth a visit as most other large-scale cathedrals. Alledged to contain the bone of William Rufus in one of those little boxes you can see around the lower altar.

The Round Table . Whilst this is very evidently not what it purports to be- King Arthur's Round Table-, that is also why it is of great interest as one of the first recorded 'relics' still in existence created solely for the purpose of gathering revenue from eager Pilgrims. Now old enough to merit a visit for 'genuine' reasons, this is an aged piece of the history of exploitation.

Winchester College . This, again, is old and pretty. It is full of little boys at varying stages of cuteness. It is very nice. It does have an attractive chapel, the oldest schoolroom in England and one of two chapels within a cloister in the country. There are two cloisters, two chapels, five or six courts, flinted or otherwise, and an alarming 700 snobs. Ew.

82 pubs . The appeal of this is failry evident. Even the tourists appreciate the benefits of there being so many watering holes. All those 'supervised' school trips.

Ancient Capital of Britain . I don't personally see why that's a big draw, but..

Gurkha Regimental Museum, Hampshire Regiment Museum, The Light Infantry Museum, some 3rd rate Roman remains, The Royal Green Jackets museum, and the an old palace in a state of grave disrepair...

The gist of is that whilst it's doubtless very pleasant to visit for a day, but a diverting place to live for 5 years it is not .