Day 12 - Adding our footprints to Old Sarum

As you climb a hill in England, the first thing you do when you get to the top is look out over the surrounding landscape. You take in the view. Occasionally, you remind yourself that you are walking in the footsteps of many who have gone before you, along paths that have been rights of way that have existed for centuries and will exist for centuries to come.

Four hundred years before the birth of Christ, someone walked up the same hill we did today and looked out over the same landscape.
They could see across the land for miles in every direction. They saw where four rivers (today known as the Nadder, Ebble, Wylye and Bourne) flowed into a mightier river (the Hampshire Avon). But unlike us, they weren't taking in the beauty, but rather the refuge and fighting advantage the hill could offer from attacks by rival clans.

Source: www.themodernantiquarian.com

If you could fly over this hill and many others like it across the UK, and you trained your eye to look for tell-tale patterns, you would see that that hummocks you crossed over on your walk were actually the outlines of foundations from buildings long ago. Not only have people walked here before us, they have lived, worked, given birth, loved, celebrated, fought and died on these now quiet grounds.

Our walk today took us from our cottage in Salisbury, down a road still known as Roman Road (you can always tell a Roman road in the UK because they are straight, no matter what the earth does), and then down a very steep path into the valley of the Avon. Ahead of us, on the other side of the valley you could make out a strangely shaped hill.

Taking advantage of the natural contours, the Celts of the Iron Age had excavated large ramparts as protection, enclosing about 29 acres to uses as a hilltop town: Old Sarum. They build round houses of thatch, farmed the land and raised livestock, made weapons and fine metalwork, and fought off rival clans ... or went off themselves looking for a fight.

In about 43 AD, another warrior group swept through. The Romans stayed for another 400 years, building further surrounding settlements and joining up roads leading to London and Winchester.

Like many sites, little is known about what happened here in Old Sarum once the Romans left. It is always somewhat baffling to think that the Romans seemed to take away with them much of their knowledge for things such as plumbing, road building, fighting and commerce.

Source: Model: John B. Thorp. Photo: Kurt Kastner. - Own work

Then along came William the Conqueror in 1066, who like the Celts, saw the strategic advantage of the hill and ordered a new castle be built on it. Being at an important crossroad, the site became an important military base and later administrative centre. Soon a cathedral was built on the site. Old Sarum continued to grow until the reign of King John (1199-1216) who had a falling out with the Catholic clergy. A tunnel which linked the castle to the cathedral was even walled up. The clergy eventually abandoned Old Sarum in 1220 using the stone from here to build another magnificent cathedral 3 km away in Salisbury. Royal interest in the castle soon also died. Over the coming centuries, the hilltop's use slowly changed until eventually the land was simply rented out as pasture land for sheep farmers.

And so it sits today. Although sheep and cattle now graze just outside of the ramparts, we did witness many dog-walkers, including a "club" exercising their dogs amid the ruins of the once grand cathedral and over the land where Iron Age man, Romans, Saxons and the like once slept and ate.

Certainly makes you stop to look down at the earth beneath your feet.