8/1 update - Bumping every time there's something new to report. Go to the last page for the latest.
Tigershire has joked a few times on this site that she visualizes Sam and Dean retiring from hunting in Victoria, BC and starting a winery and/or art gallery. While the vision of the boys carefully selecting grapes and holding tasting parties for their newest batches for the season makes me break out into giggles, it seems that Tigershire has proof!
Okay maybe not, but these pictures are fun nonetheless. Anyone have pictures of businesses, towns, counties, anything with the name "Winchester?" Send your photos and I'd be more than proud to share them on this site. For example, I know there's a Winchester, Maryland. Anyone close enough to get a town sign?


Thank you so much Tigershire for taking these and sending them to me.
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6/30 - While having a well deserved break at our local tavern, this little tidbit appeared on our placemats. The hubby and I especially like, having technical jobs and all:
"The original IBM-PC's, that had hard drives, referred to the hard drives as Winchester drives. This is due to the fact that the original Winchester drive had a model number of 3030. This is, of course, a Winchester firearm."
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Comments
While I too don't really envision either of the Winchester boys doing the grape thing, the gallery seems very Sam in some ways. He could have called up Sarah from NY, decided to settle down...
And Dean, well there are also a ton microbreweries and I could see Dean doing that.
I'm looking forward to seeing what other folks come up with.
http://winchesterblasting.com/
It's a explosive/demol ition company. I'm thinking this might be right up thier alley :}
Btw Alice, the past couple of times I tried to post comments on this site, the comments simply disappeared :-?: On a side note, I just want to say I became addicted to this site within a day or two of my first vist, and am now a regular stalker
As for Narcissus's comment about posting to this site - I find that the word verification doesn't always work the first time. Usually I have to scroll down and do it again, but I don't loose my post. It's like it times out or something cause it usually happens on my longer posts where I have to stop and think things through while I'm writing.
Winchester is a town in England http://www.visitwinchester.co.uk/ an old historic town so more down Sam's alley than Dean's
Why? He was the Bishop of Winchester.
According to lore, on his deathbed, he asked to be buried outside Winchester Cathedral where people could walk over his grave and he could 'feel the rain.' Church elders granted his request. Nine years later, however, then felt a place inside the church crypt was a more appropriate burial site, and had him moved. St. Swithun was apparently unhappy with the move and Winchester experienced torrential rains for the next 40 days until they moved him back outside.
The old wives tale that developed is that if it rains on St. Swithun's Day (July 15), 40 more days of rain will follow. If the weather's clear, there's good weather ahead for the next 40 days.
Just goes to show - don't cross a Winchester boy of any ilk!
So happy when i saw the Winchester Hotel made my friend stop so that i could take a photo of it - she thought i was mad. Anyway i just loved the idea of the boys running a hotel, they're been to enough. I wonder if it has magic fingers?
Someone with the surname Winchester would probably have had an ancestor who moved away from the town in the 13th or 14th century AD. That was about the time surnames were coming into common use in England, and most surnames were based on place, occupation (eg Smith) or descriptions (eg Brown), probably using whichever was the most obvious identifier for the first person in the family to be given the surname. (It's a moot point whether everyone got to choose their own name: some surnames were distinctly unflattering (language shifts over time have changed which ones.)
The point about the family having moved away from Winchester is that you don't give a place name to someone who lives in that place, because otherwise the point of having identifying surnames is lost - everyone in the town would have the same name. So probably the head of the household being named had recently come from Winchester to some other place, and it was the most obvious/desirab le characteristic to name themselves by.