Using a goose feather quill, a solitary scribe spent four years writing the words in Latin on the skins of 250 calves, before six artists began sumptuous illuminations using gold leaf and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. Although it was never quite finished, the Winchester Bible finally weighed in at the medieval equivalent of 32kg.

Now the largest and most beautiful of 12th-century Bibles is to go on display following a five-year conservation project as part of a landmark exhibition at Winchester cathedral, opening next week. Kings and Scribes: The Birth of a Nation takes visitors through more than 1,000 years of history, including the construction, destruction and remaking of one of the country’s greatest cathedrals over centuries of struggle and civil war.

The Bible’s four volumes will be displayed alongside a digitised version that allows visitors to turn pages and zoom in on its exquisite artistry. “You don’t get grander than this,” said Andrew Honey, a book conservator at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It was the biggest manuscript he had worked on, he said.

The exhibition, funded by a £11.2m grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and donations, has been eight years in the planning. “It celebrates the history of Winchester and the cathedral,” said Catherine Ogle, the dean. “Caring for this heritage is an awesome responsibility, and we want to share our wonderful treasures with as many people as possible.”

Since 2015, anthropologists have reconstructed 23 partial skeletons, one of them believed to be Queen Emma. Photograph: Robin Jones/Digital South

Among those treasures are six finely decorated mortuary chests containing the jumbled bones of royals and bishops dating from the late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman periods. Since 2015, a team of biological anthropologists from Bristol University has measured and recorded more than 1,300 human bones and reconstructed 23 partial skeletons.

One is believed to be Queen Emma, a powerful political figure who married two successive Kings of England, Ethelred and Canute, and was the mother of King Edward the Confessor and King Harthacnut. She died in 1052. The exhibition includes 3D printed replicas of her bones, including her incomplete skull.

Another treasure is a library of 2,000 volumes, including Bibles, books of sermons, literature and books on plants and animals, bequeathed to the cathedral in 1684 by bishop George Morley. Some books have been digitised to allow visitors close inspection.

The exhibition includes many interactive elements, including the chance to design a panel of a stained glass window. “We want to attract people from as many ages and backgrounds as possible,” said Ogle.

The cathedral also hopes the exhibition will help secure its financial sustainability. Its entrance fee – £9.50, covering both the cathedral and exhibition – is only paid by about four in 10 of its annual 300,000 visitors, as people attending services are exempt. Officials hope annual visitor numbers to the cathedral, which costs about £12,000 a day to run and maintain, will rise to half a million as a result of the exhibition.

“We’d love not to ask for an entrance fee, but the costs are enormous,” said Ogle. Since 2012, the cathedral has releaded the presbytery roof, and the presbytery high vault and 15th-century stained glass have been restored.

Construction of the present-day cathedral began in 1079 on the site of an early Christian church, Old Minster. It has the longest nave of any gothic cathedral in Europe, and is the resting place of the 18th-century novelist Jane Austen.

“It has been a place of Christian worship for almost 1,500 years, and is still a place of welcome, worship and hospitality,” said Ogle.





