Old Sarum

I walked up to Old Sarum the second morning in Salisbury. It lies about 1 mi north of my B&B, and about 2.5 mi north of Salisbury Cathedral, which is just south of the City Centre. So by my reckoning, Old Sarum is about 2 mi from the heart of Salisbury.

Old Sarum is a large, prominent hill, the only one in a very flat area of land. According to the information on the site, it was originally revered in some way by the mesolithic peoples who lived nearby. In the Iron Age to Bronze Age it was used as a defensive fort, converted to a Roman fort when the Romans came about 65? AD. After the Romans left Britain it was used by the British against the Saxons. Around 1070 or so, William the Conqueror brought his army there. Shortly after, a Norman castle was built on the summit of the hill.

Even just the walk up the hill was fascinating. There were two moats, both extremely deep, and had normal-sized trees growing on the lower banks that barely came over the mound on the outside. The inner plateau was the site of the original Cathedral, used from 1080-1180, abouts. What lies in its place now is only ruins, the base of the walls, marks where the columns were in the nave, a little more structure on the basement side, underneath what was once the library. Just to one side stood the Bishop's Palace, but all that remains of that is a single wall, about six foot high and twelve feet wide.

Crossing the inner moat and up onto the very top of the hill brought more ruins in sight. On the north side were two connecting chapels, and behind them the location of the privvies and entrance hall to the castle that lay on the west. The area in the center was left pretty well open. To the south and east were functional rooms: a bakery, kitchens, that sort.

Old Sarum was used for about two hundred years. It was 1220 or so that the Church decided it wanted a Cathedral away from military influence and began building what is now Salisbury Cathedral 2 miles south of Old Sarum, around which the city, markets, and economy of Salisbury grew. Kings used the defensive castle on Old Sarum less and less, and in the 14th century it was considered uninhabitable. It was 1550 or so that whoever was king at the time allowed for the buildings on the hilltop to be dismantled for use as construction materials elsewhere. What remains on Old Sarum are the parts not taken away at this time.

The foundations left were buried by soils and sediments and it was only in the 1830's that people noticed the grass pattern that belied hidden structures. An excavation took place 1909 or so to uncover what is seen on Old Sarum today.

A shame that the buildings had been dismantled---imagine what a rich resource they would have provided to modern archaeologists.