This little church was built long years ago to be the chapel for the farming district of Wyke, or Weeke as it is known today, near Winchester. Well into the 20th Century there was only a gravel lane outside, with hardly any house nearby - just a few cottages with their pond (still there today, and restored in the late 1990's), the parsonage and the "big house" across the way. There was, too, a modest community living in the country around.
For over a century the orginal Norman church was large enough to care for its people, but times changed after the Black Death in 1348. Until then, Winchester had sprawled outside the city walls, and there were large suburbs and many churches - two of which were St. Mary of the Valleys, near where the railway station is today, and St. Anastasius, on the site of the present St. Paul's*. Gradually, following the decline in population - as many as half of Winchester's citizens died in the plague - the suburbs and churches fell into ruin. By the 15th Century, new plans had to be made for the remaining families.
The Chapel of Wyke, which had been attached in turn to St. Mary of the Valleys and to St. Anastasius' became the parish church for the whole area. On Christmas Eve 1493 the Rev'd Sir Matthew Fox became the incumbent of the new parish.
The chapel had been enlarged, and partly rebuilt, but even so only holds sixty with any comfort, and this shows how small the population was then. It remained the sole church of the parish until 1872 when the growing number of parishioners made a daughter church essential, and the foundations of St. Paul's were laid.
With the development of the Weeke Manor estate in the 1950's came a second daughter church, that of St. Barnabas. In 1989 the then enormous parish was divided into two, with a new parish of St. Barnabas to the north, and St. Matthew's with St. Paul's to the south.
The name Wyke, usually pronounced Wick continued until the 16th Century when the alternative spellings of Weeke or Weke became common.
There is no parking available at all at the church, or on the Stockbridge Road. The nearest parking is in Bere Close, which is the first turning on the right, 300 yards past the church going towards Stockbridge. Additionally there is short-term parking available on Stoney Lane by the shops.
Toilet facilities are available on site, but only accessible via fairly steep steps.
To find the cache:
At the given co-ordinates you will find the church. Go around to the back of the church and find Betty Bird. She died on March A BCDE aged FG years.
Use this to find the cache at:
N51 (A-G) D . (E-F) E (G-B)
W001 (F-B) (C-A-B) . (D-F-B) (G-A) C
The cache is only a short walk away, the terrain difficulty reflects a bank that will need to be tackle to retrieve the cache!
You may need some tweezers to extract the log book.
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