Wren's vision

Imagine the scene.

It is the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

The royal couple have chosen to celebrate their nuptials not in London, but at the Royal Family's favourite palace outside the capital.

But instead of Windsor, the festivities take place in Winchester.

Far fetched? It might not have been but for the untimely death of one of Prince Charles's illustrious namesakes, King Charles II.

In 1685, as Charles lay on his deathbed aged just 55, work had already begun on his most adventurous building project. The King had decided to emulate the man he admired most in Europe, Louis XIV of France, the Sun King.

Charles had visited Louis's enormous palace at Versailles while he was exiled after the English Civil war. And when his crown was returned, Charles set about creating his own smaller version of the French king's palace.

A new reconstruction drawing (pictured above) shows for the first time how Winchester might have looked if King Charles's dream had become reality.

Created from Sir Christopher Wren's own drawings of ideas for the palace and using surviving buildings from the reign of Charles II, the drawing shows how Winchester would have been developed to create a stunning royal capital to rival London.

A proposed grand avenue - driven through the existing medieval buildings of the day - would have linked the west doorway of the cathedral to the new palace itself.

Set on the site of the old castle - destroyed on the orders of Cromwell a few years earlier - close behind the surviving Great Hall, the palace would have been flanked by tiered gardens and even a bowling green.

Marble columns presented by the Duke of Tuscany were to ornament the grand staircase and great fountains were planned for the surrounding parkland where the kind could also hunt.

The palace would have included 160 rooms and been crowned by a giant octagonal cupola.

The whole focus of the city we know today would have shifted. And although there would have been modern development as the centuries rolled by, historians have little doubt that the heart of the city would have been preserved very much as this illustration shows it.

"Had Charles been able to establish a royal court at Winchester then without doubt the city's history would have been different," commented Ross Turle, curator of recent history at Winchester Museums Service who advised on the illustration.

"I do not think the city would have ever replaced London as the seat of administrative power, but it would have grown in size. However, Winchester was too far away from the capital to have ever been likely to have become a permanent home for royalty."

But even though the king never did set up permanent residence in Winchester, it was known he liked the city. Indeed wealthy supporters of the monarch had begun to commission homes in Winchester in the hope they would soon be living close to the monarch. After his death these large homes, including a substantial house in Parchment Street, were lost.

Charles had long wanted to create a royal palace of his own design but lacked the money. It wasn't until around 1680 that he felt rich and strong enough to order such a building.

It has often been considered a puzzle why the Merry Monarch had not chosen his favourite Newmarket as a site for the palace. But Charles had become disillusioned with the town so close to London, and street riots and a fire which destroyed half the buildings made him turn to Winchester where he was a favourite among the population.

Indeed, the city bid to have the monarch as a resident. Knowing of the King's fondness for racing, Winchester established horse racing of its own in 1862 on the Downs in the hope of attracting his attention. It did, and he was met by cheering crowds. As many as 60 people were touched by Charles in the hope of being cured of the King's Evil, a form of skin disease.

Charles decided he would like a permanent home in Winchester and the city fathers acted quickly to sell him the site of the old castle for the princely sum of five shillings. They even restricted development in the area while waiting to see what the King had in mind.

So how close did Winchester come to being a seat of royal power?

Work on the palace had actually begun in 1684.

When asked by the king how long it would take to build, Wren replied it would be two years to do the job properly, but one "with great confusion, charge and inconvenience".

To which the king replied: "If it is possible to have it done in one year, I will have it so, for a year is a great deal in my life."

So it turned out to be, as he died in February 1685 just as the roof was about to be put on his Hampshire dream home.

After Charles's death his brother, James II, decided not to complete the palace. The building was added to and went on to be used as a military barracks before being burnt down as late as 1894.