Magdalen Hill Down is a chalk downland hill, situated 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the east of the centre of the city of Winchester in the English county of Hampshire . It is crossed by the B3404 road , the old main road from Winchester to London via New Alresford and Guildford . Most of the land to the south of the road is now a reserve run by the Butterfly Conservation , but part of it is used by the Magdalen Hill Cemetery , Winchester's principal cemetery . The land to the north of the road is largely farmed, but is also home to St Swithun's School and Leigh House Hospital .
13-474: Winchester Science Centre (known as INTECH Science Centre until 2013) is a hands-on educational science and technology centre located at Morn Hill near Chilcomb , three miles from the city of Winchester in Hampshire , England . The centre houses a range of interactive exhibits, aimed at a core audience of children aged 5–12 years old and has over 185,000 annual visitors. The dome's planetarium seats 176 and
26-704: A larger premises to meet increasing demand. In 2002, INTECH relocated to the present-day site at Morn Hill at a cost of £10 million. The new 3,500 square metre, purpose-built centre was funded partly through the Millennium Commission , NTL , IBM , the DfES and DTI , SEEDA and Hampshire County Council . The centre was opened by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh on the 28th October 2002. INTECH re-opened as Winchester Science Centre in October 2013. The centre has two floors of hands-on science exhibits and
39-619: A planetarium with a programme of full-dome films and presenter-led shows. Chilcomb Chilcomb is a small village and civil parish in the English county of Hampshire 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Winchester and includes the South Downs Way long-distance footpath. The nearby bowl barrow on Telegraph Hill along the South Downs Way just east of the village centre shows prehistoric settlement. The village has
52-509: A prehistoric field system is visible from the air The village itself is nestled in a bowl south of the River Itchen surrounded by chalk downs . The north of the parish is crossed by the A31 between Winchester and Alresford . The M3 motorway runs close to the west of the parish. Southampton is approximately 12 miles away. The village is based around a no through road which ends at
65-399: A small Norman 1120-40 church which has a graveyard with views over Winchester. Church services take place at 0930 on the second Sunday of each Month and there is an annual church féte. The listed buildings are few but include The Manor House and the thatched cottage. The church has three wall monuments to Edward Hooker, Henry Crosswell and Dorethea Goodman. At nearby Chilcomb Down
78-531: Is the UK's largest standalone planetarium. The centre is operated by Wonderseekers, a registered charity in England and Wales. INTECH (a portmanteau of " In teractive Tech nology") was founded in 1986 as a response to a local shortage of scientists, engineers and technicians, in a disused canteen at King's School on Romsey Road, Winchester. By the late 1990s, the centre had grown in popularity and began to look for
91-486: The Winchester district, mostly within the parish of Chilcomb . At its highest point, the down reaches 124 metres (407 ft) above mean sea level. The down contains a set of Bronze Age barrows , which are situated to the south of the road, and are designated as a scheduled monument . This includes a linear arrangement of five bowl barrows extending over a distance of approximately 85 metres (279 ft) with
104-616: The Zig Zag Chalk formation, grey chalk of Cenomanian age. This is surrounded successively by narrow, elliptical belts of the much harder Holywell Nodular Chalk, the New Pit Chalk (forming St. Catherine's Hill ) and the Lewes Nodular Chalk, forming the peaks of Twyford Down and Deacon hill to the south, Winchester's West Hill and Sleepers Hill to the west, Magdalen Hill Down to the north and Telegraph Hill to
117-527: The down. Towards the end of the First World War , an extensive military camp, known as Morn Hill Camp and housing 50,000 to 70,000 troops, was created on the down. The camp was largely occupied by American Expeditionary Forces , who were in transit to the Western Front . It was linked to Winchester by a branch off the short-lived Avington railway line , specifically built to serve the camps in
130-631: The east. Beyond lies a further ring of the Seaford Chalk. Chilcomb range is a Ministry of Defence range to the south of the village. The range has 12 lanes and firing points from 50m to 500m. Targets are both manual and automatic with the ETR coffins in front of the mantlet . The range is used by British Army and Royal Navy units for personal weapon training in daylight and at night. [REDACTED] Media related to Chilcomb at Wikimedia Commons Magdalen Hill Down The down lies in
143-411: The ground sloping steeply below them to the south. In the mediaeval period , Magdalen Hill Down was home to St Mary Magdalen's leprosarium , or leprosy hospital, which was situated to the north-eastern end of the site and was established in the 12th century . This was remodelled in the 14th century , but was largely demolished in the 16th century to make way for brick-built almshouses , although
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#1732802146275156-544: The medieval chapel survived. The almshouses were used as military accommodation during the English Civil War , and again to house prisoners of war from the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 1660s and 1670s . In the 1780s the buildings were demolished leaving no above ground remains in what is now farmland, although subsequent excavation has revealed their location. In 1914, Magdalen Hill Cemetery opened on
169-496: The top of the hill. The INTECH science centre is located on the northern edge of the parish. Chilcomb lies within the heart of the Winchester anticline , an up-fold in the rocks with older beds exposed in the centre. This is surrounded by outcrops of successively younger beds forming an enclosing ring of steep hills broken only by the Itchen Valley. In the centre a valley running east–west from Chilcomb to Bar End lies on
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