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 in the 660s when the West Saxon bishopric was transferred from Dorchester-on-Thames. The present form of the city dates to reconstruction in the late 9th century, when king Alfred the Great obliterated the Roman street plan in favour of a new grid in order to provide better defence against the Vikings. The city's first mint appears to date from this period. In the early tenth century there were two new ecclesiastical establishments, the convent of Nunnaminster, founded by Alfred's widow Ealhswith, and the New Minster. Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester was a leading figure in the monastic reform movement of the