You can't help but sense the ghosts of history massing around you as you walk the city's streets, after reading Richard Sawyer's new book, Civil War in Winchester.

A building as bleakly 20th century as the multi-storey car park in Tower Street somehow becomes more interesting when you find out it's on the site of the section of wall probably first breached by the Parliamentary forces as they captured the Royalist city shortly before Christmas 1642. (Probably: despite all this eyewitness material, there's still a certain amount of conjecture.)

And three years later, when Oliver Cromwell finally took Winchester Castle, leading to the demolition of all but the Great Hall, the treaty articles were negotiated in a house in St Thomas Street or so tradition has it.

Defensive earthworks, known as sconces, were built at Orams Arbour and St Giles Hill. But Oliver's Battery was certainly not a gun platform: it was too far from the city to make effective use of the cannon available, though the land may have been used by Cromwell to park his artillery as they approached from Romsey.

Within yards of our own Hampshire Chronicle offices stood St Clements Church the little road at the back of the building is still called St Clement Street. According to one 17th century scribe, St Clements was "a very little church...which in the time of the war, by being made a court of guard for soldiers, was miserably ransacked and torn in pieces, rendered useless as a church, a main part of it uncovered...a place to lay faggots in, yea to keep hogs in..."

Mr Sawyer's soft-back volume is billed as an anthology of 17th century writings collected by the author, who lives at Otterbourne.

These passages, by people who really knew the city in those far-off days, bring the story vividly to life, and usually it's a vision of history stripped bare of romance. Take this piece on the church of St Mary Callender, a once-elegant and important edifice standing below the Buttercross on the north side of the High Street, as a measure of the everyday horror of city life. Even before the Civil War the church had been allowed to fall into ruin, explained the contemporary writer: "In our times no signs of its belfry, no roof or covering belonging to it, only a ghastly sight of two ruinous walls, lying open for butchers to empty therein the bellies of their killed beasts, and persons of all sorts to lay their excrements, that it became little other than a jakes latrine."

The orgy of destruction at the Cathedral, after the Parliamentarians under William Waller entered Winchester in December, 1642, makes grim reading. One commentator, describing the violation of cabinets containing the bones of ancient kings and queens, wrote: "The outcry of the people detesting so great inhumanity caused some of their commanders... to come in among them to restrain their madness.

"Those windows which they cold not reach with their swords, muskets or rests they broke by throwing at them the bones of the Kings, Queens, Bishops, Confessors, or Saints doing more than £1000 worth of damage to the windows."

One monument that avoided the attention of the rioting troops was William of Wykeham's Chantry, reputedly saved by the action of Nathaniel Feinnes, a colonel in the Parliamentary army, who was said to have stood with sword drawn, defying his own troops. His portrait adorns the front cover of Mr Sawyer's book.

Winchester was destined to change hands again, before the Battle of Cheriton in 1644 dealt a near mortal blow to the Royalist cause and brought Waller back to the city.

An incident sending a shudder through the city occurred in January 1648 when Captain Robert Burley was tried for treason for attempting to rescue King Charles from his Isle of Wight prison. He faced Judge Wilde in the Great Hall and was condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered. No one could be found in Hampshire to carry out the bloody sentence and an executioner had to be sent from London.

The King was finally transferred to London in December 1648, and he stopped off at Winchester on his way to trial and execution. Oddly in the circumstances, he was received by the Mayor and Aldermen and presented with the city mace, many of the local gentry gathering to kiss his hand. After he had left, the Mayor was reprimanded and forced to tender his apologies to Parliament but there seem to have been no other repercussions.

City life appears to have continued in a surprisingly ordinary groove. As early as July 1646 there's a reference to Winchester Races on the Worthy Down course, and by 1657 racing seems to have been an entirely acceptable pastime. It's not the way we usually view Puritan England.

I have one reservation about this absorbing book. You expect 17th spelling and grammar to be eccentric: the modern text would have repaid more rigorous attention during proof-reading.

Containing 282 pages, maps, black and white and colour pictures, Richard Sawyer's Civil War in Winchester is published by Rowanvale Books of Salisbury, price £15.99.

Robin Brown