In 1012 King Aethelred II (the ‘Unready’)
granted to his wife, Queen Emma, the manor
of God Begot House. Although still within
the city walls, Queen Emma’s manor was
legally outside of the city of Winchester and
under Emma’s control. In the modern city, the
site of this Anglo-Saxon manor is bounded
by the High Street, St Peter, and St George’s
Streets with the western boundary near Waterstones. The current God Begot House though, is a later construction. Although nothing physical is left of her property on Winchester’s High Street, the location of her chapel of St Peter’s is picked out in brick on the pavement behind God Begot House. In the Royal Oak (next door) you can see some of the older, flint construction in the basement that marks a much older medieval segment of the building. The daughter of Duke Richard I of Normandy, Emma, was a skilled diplomat and crafty survivor. Emma was queen consort to both Aethelred II and, after his death, his Danish successor, Canute. She also engineered the reigns of sons by both of her husbands: Harthacanute, king of Denmark and England, and Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. Emma had strong links to Winchester – both of her marriages took place here, her son Edward the Confessor celebrated his second coronation here in 1043 and she was buried here, with her husband Canute when she died in 1052.
