conjectured that it may be nothing more than the wheel of fortune which
Henry III commanded to be made for the castle. In later years another
palace was started here by Charles II, the only portion that was
completed being now used as barracks.

Beyond the West Gate is an obelisk, set up in commemoration of a
visitation of the Plague in 1669, when the country people brought their
produce and left it outside the gate to be taken in by the city
dwellers, who deposited the money for the goods in bowls of vinegar,
whence it was abstracted by pincers, to avoid infection. The stone on
which the exchanges were made is incorporated in the base of the
obelisk.

The West Gate is the only one that remains of the principal entrances to
the city, as King's Gate, with the little church of St. Swithun perched
on top, was of secondary importance. This West Gate escaped the fate
that has overtaken so many of our old city gates owing to its having
been used for some time as a smoking room for the adjacent hotel. This
apartment above the crown of the gateway arch is, like that over the
West Gate of Canterbury, used for the purposes of a museum, wherein are
deposited such interesting relics as the Winchester bushel, cloth
measures, and ancient instruments of punishment. At one time the room
was used as a prison, and the walls are covered with names or marks made
by those who were incarcerated here.

The gate is of fourteenth-century date, the two panels with armorial
bearings seen on the western side of the archway being later insertions.
Through the gateway a delightful view is obtained of the picturesque
High Street, with many a high-pitched gable rising above the masses of
irregular architecture; while an ancient clock on a wooden bracket juts