[Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.]
The celebrated cathedral, which in some respects may be considered the
earliest in England, is the chief object at Salisbury, and was founded
by Bishop Poore in 1220. It was the first great church built in the
Early English style, and its spire is among the most imposing Gothic
constructions in existence. The city of Salisbury is unique in having
nothing Roman, Saxon, or Norman in its origin, and in being even without
the remains of a baronial fortress. It is a purely English city, and,
though it was surrounded by walls, they were merely boundaries of the
dominions of the ecclesiastics. The see of Salisbury in 1215 was removed
from Old Sarum to its present location in consequence of the frequent
contests between the clergy and the castellans, and soon afterwards the
construction of the cathedral began. King Henry III. granted the church
a weekly market and an annual fair lasting eight days, and the
symmetrical arrangement of the streets is said to have been caused by
the original laying out of the city in spaces "seven perches each in
length and three in breadth," as the historian tells us. The cathedral
close, which is surrounded by a wall, has four gateways, and the best
view of the cathedral is from the north-eastern side of the close, but a
more distant view--say from a mile away--brings out the proportions of
the universally admired spire to much greater advantage. The chief
cathedral entrance is by the north porch, which is a fine and lofty
structure, lined with a double arcade and having an upper chamber. The
nave is beautiful, though it suffers somewhat in warmth of coloring from
lacking stained glass, and the cloisters, which are entered from the
south-western transept, are admirable, being of later date and
exhibiting a more developed style than the remainder of the cathedral.
Their graceful windows and long gray arcades contrast splendidly with
the greensward of the cloister-garth. They include an octagonal
chapter-house, fifty-eight feet in diameter and fifty-two feet high,
which has been restored in memory of a recent bishop at a cost of
$260,000. The restoration has enriched the house with magnificent
sculptures representing Old-Testament history, and the restoration of
the cathedral is also progressing. The adjoining episcopal palace is an
irregular but picturesque pile of buildings, with a gateway tower that
is a prominent feature.
Salisbury has plenty of old houses, like most English towns, and it also
has a large square market-place, containing the Gothic Poultry Cross, a
most graceful stone structure, and also the council-house of modern
erection, in front of which is a statue of Sidney Herbert. Its ancient
banquet-hall, built four hundred years ago by John Halle, and having a
lofty timber roof and an elaborately-carved oak screen, is now used as
the show-room for a shop.
[Illustration: SALISBURY MARKET.]
To the northward of Salisbury is that region filled with prehistoric
relics known as Salisbury Plain. Here are ancient fortresses, barrows,
and sepulchral mounds, earthworks, dykes, and trenches, roadways of the
Roman and the Briton, and the great British stronghold, guarding the
southern entrance to the plain, which became the Old Sarum of later
times. Until within a century this plain was a solitary and almost
abandoned region, but now there are good roads crossing it and much of
the land is cultivated. It is a great triangular chalk-measure, each
side roughly estimated at twenty miles long. The Bourne, Wiley, and Avon
flow through it to meet near Salisbury, and all the bolder heights
between their valleys are marked by ancient fortifications. Wiltshire is
thus said to be divided between chalk and cheese, for the northern
district beyond the plain is a great dairy region. Let us journey
northward from Salisbury across the plain, and as we enter its southern
border there rises up almost at the edge the conical hill of Old Sarum,
crowned by intrenchments. When they were made is not known, but in 552
they were a British defence against the Saxons, who captured them after
a bitter fight and overran the plain. Five centuries later William the
Norman reviewed his army here, and after the first Domesday survey
summoned all the landholders of England to the number of sixty thousand,
who here swore fealty to him. The Normans strengthened it with a castle,
and soon a cathedral also rose at Old Sarum, while a town grew around
them. But all have disappeared, though now there can be traced the
outlines of streets and houses and the foundations of the old cathedral.
When the clergy removed to Salisbury it is said they determined the new
site by an arrow shot from the ramparts of Old Sarum, and moving the
cathedral soon attracted the people. Old Sarum for some time remained a
strong fortress with many houses, but the cathedral was taken down in
1331 and its materials used for building the famous spire at Salisbury.
The castle decayed, the town was gradually deserted, and as long ago as
the sixteenth century we are told there was not a single house left
there. And such it is to this day. Climbing the steep face of the hill,
the summit is found fenced by a vast earthen rampart and ditch enclosing
twenty-seven acres with an irregular circle, the height from the bottom
of the ditch to the top of the rampart being over one hundred feet. A
smaller inner rampart as high as the outer one made the central citadel.
Nearly all the stone has long ago been carried off to build Salisbury,
and weeds and brushwood have overrun the remarkable fortress that has
come down to us from such venerable antiquity. Under the English
"rotten-borough" system Old Sarum enjoyed the privilege of sending two
members to Parliament for three centuries after it ceased to be
inhabited. The old tree under which the election was held still exists,
and the elder Pitt, who lived near by, was first sent to Parliament as a
representative of Old Sarum's vacant mounds.