LIES two miles from Salisbury, and stands up, making a bold outline in
the surrounding open country. It is a hill, bare now, save for some
trees, encircled with entrenchments, with a central mound peering above
them. But centuries ago this spot was crowded with buildings—religious,
military, and domestic, and was one of the most important in our island.
Some say that the ancient British name was _Caer Sarflag_, the “City of
the Service Tree.” Its Roman name was _Sorbiodunun_, the Saxon
_Sarobyrig_. The face of the hill is smooth and very steep. The summit
is fenced by a mighty earthen rampart and ditch, protected by a lower
raised bank outside of it, the height from the top of the one to the
bottom of the other being 106 feet. The surface of the hill is an
elongated circular area of 27½ acres. In the centre of the area is a
second circular earthwork and ditch 100 feet high, and within these stood
the citadel. On the top of the earthwork surrounding the citadel was a
very strong wall 12 feet thick, of flint embedded in rubble, and coated
with square stones, of which some portion remain. To the great outer
earthwork there were two entrances—one (guarded by a hornwork still
remaining) on the western, another (the postern) on the eastern side.
The site of the citadel is now overgrown with briers and brushwood; the
rest of the area is partly in a state of nature, partly cultivated.
“Celt and Roman alike had seen the military value of the height from
which the eye sweeps nowadays over the grassy meadows of the Avon to the
arrowy spire of Salisbury; and, admirable as the position was in itself,
it had been strengthened at a vast cost of labour. The camp on the
summit of the knoll was girt in by a trench hewn so deeply in the chalk
that, from the inner side of it, the white face of the rampart rose 100
feet high, while strong outworks protected the approaches to the fortress
from the west and from the east.”
Though there may have been a British stronghold here, still, it is the
opinion of good antiquaries that there is now no British work to be seen;
that the Romans took possession of the hill and defended it by a simple
escarpment, without any ditch, but with outworks at the entrances; and
that the ditch now on the face of the scarp, as well as the central
citadel and its defences, were added by the Saxons, and perhaps by
Alfred, who, in his war with the Danes, certainly paid great attention to
strengthening the position. There are Roman roads to Silchester,
Winchester, Dorchester, Uphill, on the Bristol Channel, and others, it is
believed, to Bath and Marlborough. Cynric the Saxon won a victory over
the Britons in 552. In 960, Edgar held his Council here. In 1003,
Seweyn and the Danes are said to have stormed it. In the time of the
Confessor a monastery of nuns was established. It was not till 1072 that
it became the seat of a bishop. The kingdom of Wessex originally formed
one diocese, and the see being fixed 683, St. Hædde being bishop, the see
was removed to Winchester. In 705, the diocese was divided, a new see
for the district of E. Selwood being fixed at Sherborne, whose first
bishop was St. Ealdhelm. A further subdivision took place in 909, a new
see for Berks and Wilts being created at Ramsbury, which was reunited to
Sherborne by Bishop Herman 1045, who in 1072 transferred the see to Old
Sarum. In 1070 William the Conqueror, as the closing act of his
conquest, reviewed his victorious army on the plain below Old Sarum,
where now the modern city stands, rewarding its leaders with lands and
gifts. The Castellanship of Sarum he gave to his kinsman, Osmund, who
afterwards, taking Holy Orders, succeeded Herman in the see. In 1086 the
King assembled here, the year before his death, all the chief landowners
of the realm to swear that “whose men soever they were they would be
faithful to him against all other men,” by which “England was made ever
afterwards an undivided kingdom.”
Bishop Osmund finished his new cathedral in 1092, “and established the
new ritual ‘ad usum Sarum.’” The foundations of the cathedral were
visible in the very dry summer of 1834. It was in the form of a cross
270 feet long by 70 feet wide, the transept of the same width and 150
feet long. Its plan is remarkable for having a square instead of an
apsidal East end, and a Galilee or Atrium at the West end. Within a few
days of its consecration a thunderstorm seriously injured the roofs and
walls. Robert of Gloucester, alluding to the fifth year of the reign of
William II., sings:—
“So gret lytnynge was the vyfte yer so that al to noghte
The rof of the Chyrch of Salesbury it bronte
Rygh even the vyfte day that he y hawled was.”
Henry the First’s celebrated chancellor, Bishop Roger, improved both the
church and its fortifications. In the reign of Stephen the place began
to decline. The soldiers and priests, cooped up into so small a space,
could not agree. The situation was cold and windy, and water was scarce.
Bishop Richard Poore is said to have been directed in a vision to build
upon the maer (or boundary) field, called in some accounts Miry-Field or
the Merrifield, where a new church (the present cathedral) was begun.
The citizens migrated, the great travelling road was diverted to the new
site, and the days of Old Sarum were numbered. A charter granted to the
new town sealed its fate. Very little, however, is known about the real
history of the transference of the people from one place to the other.
There are some reasons for believing that a new town had been growing up
by degrees long before the cathedral was built at New Sarum. Being only
1600 feet in diameter, Old Sarum must have afforded small space for a
cathedral, bishop’s palace, a garrison, streets and houses. The
cathedral was taken down in 1331 (Edward III.), and its materials used in
building the new spire, Close Walls, &c. Leland (temp. Henry VIII.)
reports some portions of the building as visible in his time, but says:
“There is not one house neither within or without Old Saresbyri
inhabited. Much notable ruinus building of the castell yet ther
remaynith. The ditch that envirined the old town was a very deepe and
strong thynge.” The walls remained till 1608, and served as a quarry.
Fisherton old county jail (inter alia) was built out of them. The great
hollow enclosure of Old Sarum, girt by its frowning earthwork (not unlike
the crater of a volcano), is certainly a solemn and desolate place.
Pepys, passing by, and not knowing what it was, desired to examine it.
“I saw a great fortification,” he says, “and there light and to it and in
it, and find it so prodigious so as to frighten one to be in it all alone
at that time of night.” A subterranean passage was discovered in 1795.
The foundations of towers may be traced, and many Roman coins have been
met with. Old Salisbury has given a title to the families of d’Eureux or
Devereux, Longespee, Montacute, Nevill Plantagenet, and the Cecil family,
who still enjoy it. The ground ceased to be Crown property in 1447, when
it was granted by James I. to the Lords Stourton; on forfeiture by them,
it was granted by James I. to the Cecils. They sold it to Governor Pitt,
and the Earl of Chatham sold it to the Earl of Caledon. It was
subsequently purchased by the Ecclesiastical Commission. Its dignity as
the resort of kings and seat of councils ceased with the growth of the
younger city; but it long retained one relic of its former greatness, the
right of returning two members to Parliament, which was duly exercised
until the passing of the Reform Bill, although for many a year only two
or three cottages had existed. The elections were held at the foot of
the hill on Election Acre, where a tent was pitched beneath the branches
of an elm-tree, which is still pointed out as occupying the site of the
last remaining house.
[Picture: Saint Mary’s, Amesbury. (Photo Miss Weed Ward.)]