WINCHESTER will be starring in a TV documentary airing this weekend focusing on the city’s medieval history.

Channel Four’s Britain’s Most Historic Towns will visit various locations, including the cathedral, and include historical and archaeology experts from the University of Winchester.

Archaeologist Dr Simon Roffey and historian Dr Katherine Weikert were both interviewed by presenter Dr Alice Roberts, who will tell the story of Norman England through key moments in the history of Winchester, Britain’s most Norman city.

Dr Roberts also attempts to storm a castle in chain mail, investigates the origins of modern surgery and tucks in to an appetising eel pie.

A set of human remains excavated from the hospital cemetery of St Mary Magdalen in Winchester, the country’s earliest excavated leprosy hospital and one of the most extensively excavated medieval hospitals in western Europe, will also feature.

Dr Roffey said: “The fact that our excavation and post-excavation work at the medieval hospital of St Mary Magdalen has featured again on television really shows both the importance of this site and our work there, as well as its continued ability to catch the public imagination.”

Winchester-based research argues that the hospital may represent the beginnings of institutional health care, and that such early hospitals – founded in the first few decades of the Norman Conquest – indicate a high level of social responsibility towards the care of leprosy sufferers.

Also in the show, Dr Weikert visits the Bishop’s Palace with Alice Roberts to talk about the twelfth-century Anarchy – a civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda – and Winchester’s key role for both sides. The Rout of Winchester in 1141 was a crucial pivoting point of the Anarchy.

She said: “Medieval Winchester isn’t just important on a local or regional scale, but was one of the great cities of the Conquest era, a power base to the Anglo-Saxon and Norman rulers, as well as the church with the powerful medieval bishops of Winchester."

Britain’s Most Historic Towns featuring Winchester airs at 8pm on Saturday, April 21 on Channel Four.