Old Burghclere subsoil chalk and greensand. Burghclere remained in the possession of the see of Winchester until 1551. The most notable Bishops of Winchester being William of Wykeham (1320 or 1324–1404), who founded New College, Oxford, and New College School in 1379, and Winchester College in 1382, but also owned, in his own right, Earlstone manor in the parish of Burghclere. William Waynflete, Lord Chancellor of England (1456–1460) and founder of Magdalen School and College in Oxford was also particularly renowned. In 1551 Edward VI received it from John Ponet, Bishop of Winchester, in exchange for lands elsewhere. King Edward VI granted
Winchester the "Barsetshire" novels of Anthony Trollope, who attended Winchester College; "The Warden" (1855) is said to be based on a scandal at the Hospital of St Cross. A fictionalised Winchester appears as "Wintoncester" in Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" (1891). Some of the action in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" (1892) takes place in the city—the Black Swan hotel mentioned in the story formerly stood at the end of Southgate St and is still acknowledged by a figure on the outside of the building. In Charles Kingsley's romantic history "Hereward the Wake" (1866), Hereward smashes