Last month, Laurie and I headed south to Salisbury for some sightseeing. It was a long drive through heavy traffic and we were very glad to eventually pull up at our B&B, the Alabare Guest House on Tollgate Road, Salisbury. We immediately headed into the city (the centre was only a 10-minute walk away) for a steak dinner at the Red Lion Hotel.
The next day, Tuesday 20 January, we made an early start on a fine but frosty morning and headed first to Old Sarum, the original settlement in the area. This has a long history, having begun as an Iron Age hill fort with concentric rings of ramparts and ditches. It was later used as a place of refuge during the Danish invasions of the 9th Century, and in the 11th Century the Normans established a castle on the site. The castle buildings expanded greatly over the next two centuries, but by the early 14th Century the castle had outlived its usefulness and was derelict. Here you can see a model of it in its heyday (photo from Wikipedia Commons).
Today the site is managed by English Heritage and visitors can view the remaining foundations of the castle and its outbuildings. Most of the dressed stone was taken away and used to build the modern city of Salisbury.
A cathedral was also built on the hill in 1092, adjacent to the castle, but the location was far from ideal either for a cathedral or for any kind of permanent habitation. It was windy and cold, and it lacked a reliable source of water. Accordingly, a new cathedral (the present one) was begun in the valley to the south by the River Avon in 1220. Here you can see the outlines of the old cathedral as seen from Old Sarum hill.
Having endured the cold wind for half an hour or more, we were grateful for the warmth of the car as we continued northward in the direction of Stonehenge. I had been there once before, in 1981, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the new developments at this important archaeological site. At a distance of about a mile and a half from the stones, there is a visitor centre with a wealth of well-presented information on recent finds in the area, the lives of the Neolithic inhabitants and the uses to which the stones and their surroundings were put. There is also extensive parking, and visitors are ferried from the centre to the stones by shuttle buses. The exhibition is mainly indoors and heated (which we found welcome!) but there is also a realistic mock-up of a cluster of Neolithic roundhouses, built of wattle and daub with thatched roofs. In one of them, we spoke to an English Heritage guide, who enthusiastically told us about the house and its contents, and allowed us to handle authentically reproduced clothing - made from nettles - and implements such as a bronze axe. After a good look around the exhibition, we boarded the shuttle bus and made the trip to see Stonehenge itself.
Our next destination was the village of Avebury and its Neolithic stone circles. As we had not expected to spend so much time at Stonehenge, the afternoon was drawing to a close and it was nearly sunset by the time we arrived. We just had time for a quick lunch at the Red Lion Inn and a short walk around some of the stones. The atmosphere at Avebury contrasts with that of Stonehenge; we found the stones here had a warm and welcoming 'feel' to them, whereas Stonehenge had seemed cold and forbidding.
The second day, Wednesday 21 January, was spent looking around Salisbury at a leisurely pace. Though the city has long outgrown its mediaeval bounds and, like most British towns and cities, is cursed by motor traffic, you can still see many old buildings and find quiet streets and places to relax. Because Laurie's glasses were broken, we first went to Butcher Row to find the Vision Express optician business to see if we could get them repaired. Vision Express tried, but actually did more damage than good. At least we saw this old market structure and a pub that we earmarked for a visit later in the day.
We wandered through the town, enjoying the sights.
Swans on the River Avon
The river gushes past a sluice gate further downstream.
I am not sure, but I think this may have been part of the wall that the Bishop of Salisbury created around the Cathedral after citizens rioted against his taxation. Laurie was confused at first when I referred to it as a 'bar', which is what it would be called in Yorkshire.
Of course, a visit to the famous Cathedral was a must. One of the volunteer guides was only too happy to provide us with information. For example, she told us that the foundations of the building are only four feet deep and that thse rest on a thick substrate of gravel. The water table is also generally only four feet below the floor level and is plumbed daily through an aperture in the stone slabs.
Within the Cathedral are many beautiful and well preserved monuments. My favourite is the Gorges Monument, which is packed with symbolism. Note the Platonic polyhedra.
There was also the mediaeval clock, built around 1386. It works by a system of weighted pulleys and was designed to ring the hour rather than display the time on a clock face.
After leaving the Cathedral, we made our way back into town and to 'The Haunch of Venison', a pub that dates back to the 14th Century and is one of the oldest in England. In the cosy bar, we exchanged banter with a couple of locals, and the landlady enthusiastically told us about the pub's history and its ghosts. It began its life as a brothel and was, she says, frequented by priests from the nearby Church of St Thomas Beckett, who had access to it via an underground tunnel!
The outside of the Haunch of Venison, with candles burning in the windows.
It was such a fabulous visit, I am so very glad we could go and see all those different places. I had never been to Stonehenge before as when I lived here in the 1980's it had been fenced off and i just didn't want to see it that way, and I loved the visit to Portsmouth as well.. this week of touring those places in the south was wonderful and i will always treasure those memories <3