OLD SALISBURY
The name of Salisbury, which today calls up a
vision of the loveliest of spires rising from the
serenest of lawns, primarily belongs to the majestic
solitary mound a mile and a quarter to the north. (fn. 1)
Here, on and round a natural hill fortress overlooking the River Avon, is the site of the dead town of
Old Salisbury, now chiefly remembered, under the
name of Old Sarum, as the classic example of a
rotten borough.
The modern city of Salisbury stands upon the
low lands between the Avon on the west and its
tributary river the Bourne on the east, meeting to
the south-east of it. North of the city the ground
rises rapidly from the west bank of the Bourne, and
the high land thrusts out a narrow neck ending in a
spur towards the Avon. On the north, west and
south the spur falls away in steep banks: at the
centre it rises, with artificial additions, to a height
of 400 ft. In a circle round the crest of the hill is the
ditch of the Norman castle, enclosing an area of a
little over an acre. In a wider circle, and fitting
neatly within the 300 ft. contour line, is another
ditch, which once enclosed the outer ward of the
castle and the cathedral church built by St. Osmund
and Roger, Bishops of Salisbury. The outer defence
was first made, it appears, in the Early Iron Age,
and its British name in its genitival form was
Sorvioduni or Sorbiodoni. With the advent of the
Saxons its name underwent a change, and the
ending — dunum (as the genitive is commonly
extended) was replaced by burg or burh, each meaning a defensive place. The name appears as Searobyrg in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and is Sarisberie
in Domesday Book. (fn. 2) The use of the abbreviation
Sar' was common; it is discussed elsewhere. (fn. 3)
It is clear that in the earlier Middle Ages the name
of Salisbury was used of a much larger area than
the mound above described, even including the
borough and its lands; and it is essential for a true
understanding of the history of both the old and the
new towns that various uses of the name should be
distinguished. Domesday Book records that the
Bishop of Salisbury held Salisbury. In the time of
King Edward it paid geld for 50 hides; in 1086 there
was land for 32 ploughs. (fn. 4) This was a very large area,
larger than the castle, the old borough and the future
city put together. The question what it covered is
partly answered by the geld roll, which says that the
hundred in which Salisbury lay, Underditch, gelded
at 70 hides. The bishop's estate therefore bore
5/7ths of the geld of the hundred, and presumably
occupied a like proportion of its area. (fn. 5) Wilsford and
Lake, vills in the hundred, were not included, but
Stratford and Woodford, which belonged to the
bishop, presumably were, as well as his demesnes
and meadows in which the future city was to rise.
The use of the comprehensive name Sarisberie does
not imply that the bishop's holding was all one
manor. It could be a group of manors, which for the
king's purpose there was no point in separating, for
one lord, the bishop, was accountable for the geld,
and it was geld that the king wanted.
There is another reference in Domesday to
Sarisberie. At the beginning of the account of
Wiltshire, in the part usually reserved for boroughs,
are entered revenues due from Wilton and Malmesbury, the only places expressly described as burgi.
There are, besides, other places where the inhabitants are called burgenses, or which, though not
expressly described as boroughs, yield to the king
the distinctive form of taxation appropriate to them.
This is the third penny. These places were probably
very small, even by contemporary standards, rural
in character, and the clerks may have thought it
doing violence to language to describe them as
boroughs: Maitland remarked that 'when we get to
Wiltshire we are in the classical land of small
boroughs'. (fn. 6) Among the places in Wiltshire which
yielded the third penny to the king was Sarisberie:
it yielded £6. (fn. 7) It is hardly probable that this Sarisberie is the same as, or part of, the bishop's Sarisberie, for this would mean that it was being taxed
twice, once like a manor and once like a borough.
It appears, therefore, that in 1086 there are
already two units of land bearing the same name:
one is a manor or group of manors held by the
bishop, the other a borough or at least a demesne
paying a third penny to the king. This conclusion
is contrary to the frequently accepted view that
there was only one Salisbury — namely, Old Sarum
— until the bishop founded his new city in the
meadows in 1220. Accordingly, when Round, editing the pipe roll for 1184–5, noted a reference to
Old Salisbury, he inferred that the bishop's city of
New Salisbury was coming into being some years
before its official constitution. (fn. 8) The Domesday
evidence is a warning that his inference cannot
safely be drawn.
Furthermore, there is other evidence of the
existence of two Salisburys in the 12th century. The
pipe roll of 1130 records that the toll of Salisbury
market, which had belonged to the farm of Wilton,
had been given by the queen to the church of
Salisbury. (fn. 9) This means that the market had belonged to the king, and was accounted for through
the account of the shire town: it was one of the
revenues of the king's borough. This gift, with
others, was confirmed to the church of Salisbury by
Pope Eugenius III in 1146. In his bull he mentions
among the bishop's possessions veteres Sarisberias
with the hundred, and, separately, the toll of
Salisbury, and land in the borough of Salisbury: not
the borough itself. (fn. 10) He did not of course purport
to give away the king's borough. Another striking
fact emerges from the bull. It was Old Salisbury
that belonged to the bishop, or perhaps rather the
Old Salisburys, for the Pope used the plural. He
must be referring to the bishop's great estate, which
probably included several village settlements: it had
4½ mills according to Domesday, no doubt at various
points along the river. The name of Old Salisbury
occurs again in 1166–7. (fn. 11)
After the death of Bishop Jocelin in 1184 the see
of Salisbury remained vacant for several years, and
during the vacancy the accounts of the see were
entered upon the pipe rolls. In 1184–5 there were
payments to the religious of Salisbury and Old
Salisbury, and oats were sown at Old Salisbury —
on the bishop's estate. (fn. 12) In 1187–8 the men of Old
Salisbury were tallaged among the bishop's manors,
and the men of Salisbury paid among the king's
demesnes. (fn. 13) The Exchequer officials used the same
terms as the Pope.
It is commonly said that when the bishop shook
the dust of the king's castle from off his feet and
founded a new city and cathedral church upon his
own meadows, he quitted Old Salisbury for a New
Salisbury. If the foregoing argument is correct,
however, contemporaries would have said that he
quitted the borough of Salisbury and moved to Old
Salisbury. This is precisely the version of the
Dunstable Annalist, (fn. 14) who records under 1220 that
by papal authority the cathedral church of Salisbury
was translated from the castle precinct to Old
Salisbury by the river.
The bishop's settlements, the Old Salisburys,
therefore come first in date, followed by the borough
on the hill-top. The later boundaries of the borough,
with the castle, show that it was virtually surrounded
by the bishop's estate, or that part of it, Stratford,
which later was assigned to the dean and chapter.
It is evident that it was at some time carved out of
Stratford: perhaps it was reserved when one of the
kings of Wessex endowed the bishop, then seated
at Ramsbury or Sherborne, with Sarisberie. Some
like process can be traced elsewhere. (fn. 15)
It is evident that the open field system was
already established when the borough of Salisbury
was severed from Stratford, for around the village
and the borough the strips of the bishop's tenants
and the king's burgesses were intermingled, as those
of their successors continued to be until the inclosure
of the fields in 1800. The severance no doubt
accounts for the fact that the king and the bishop
each had half the revenues from a mill at Sarisberie.
Whether the bishop had a house on his estate
outside the king's borough and castle from early
times does not appear, but evidently he provided
himself with one before the official foundation of
his new city, for in 1218 Bishop Richard Poore dated
a charter from New Place at veteres Sarisberias. (fn. 16)
In the following year the bishop owed a palfrey for
having a market on Fridays in Old Salisbury. (fn. 17)
Two years later the king granted the bishop a fair
yearly at New Salisbury. (fn. 18) Here, perhaps, is a first
recognition by the king that the bishop's vills of
Old Salisbury are being in part absorbed by his
grand new city of New Salisbury, whose very
existence is to create the practice of distinguishing
the king's borough of Salisbury by referring to it
as Old Salisbury.
BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST
In the course of its history the several disadvantages
of Salisbury hill-top as a place of human habitation
have been painfully obvious; and they are nearly as
obvious today. It is waterless and windswept; in
winter without cover from the cold, in summer
exposed to a sun reflected in the glare of the chalk.
Yet it had one supreme advantage. In time of war,
and rumour of war, its quality as a fortress was
unrivalled in the neighbourhood. It commanded the
whole area; none could approach without being
observed; it was protected on three sides by steep
banks; and it dominated the River Avon and the
Roman roads.
As might be expected, therefore, it comes into
prominence when its military value is important.
It was adopted as a hill fortress and the outer ditch
made in the Early Iron Age, although it remains
uncertain how early in the Iron Age it can be
dated. (fn. 19) During the Roman occupation there must
have been activity all round it, because the Roman
road from London and Silchester to Dorchester ran
through it, and was met here by a branch from
Winchester which perhaps continued to the lead
mines of Mendip. (fn. 20) If there had been danger of
rebellion against the Romans they might have left
more evidence of their occupation; as it is, the hill
seems to have been little more than a posting station
on the roads. Among the finds are a few coins from
Hadrian to Honorius, and little else. So scanty have
the finds been that it has been thought that a Roman
settlement may have been made on the river bank
at Stratford; but here, too, little has been found,
and it would appear that there was not much
occupation at all.
The tide of war passed over the hill in successive
invasions. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that
in 552 Cynric, King of the West Saxons, fought
against the Britons in Searobyrg. (fn. 21) In the wars
between English and Danes in the 9th century
Salisbury is not specifically mentioned. It is not
named as one of the burhs in the Burghal Hidage of
c. 878. Yet Wilton is: (fn. 22) and when the defensive value
of Salisbury, the relative weakness of Wilton, and
the proximity of the two are considered, it may be
wondered whether they were not in some way linked
together, Salisbury perhaps being regarded as the
defensive place for the sheriff and his shire-town.
The arrangement by which the revenue of Salisbury
market passed through the account of the Wilton
farm in 1130, (fn. 23) an arrangement which may be a
survival of an old standing relationship, makes the
suggestion a little more than a mere speculation.
Events of the later Danish wars strengthen this
view. The Chronicle records that in 1003 the Danish
army under Sweyn went up into Wiltshire. (fn. 24) Sweyn
plundered and burnt Wilton; he went thence to
Salisbury, and thence again went to the sea. It is
not recorded that Salisbury was taken or even
assaulted.
The settling of the chronology of the coin types
of Ethelred II, and in particular the acceptance of
the view that the short cross pennies must be
divided into two classes, one issued at the beginning
of the reign and the other at the end, brings to light
an interesting conclusion. The Salisbury issues of
coins begin with the fifth, or helmet, type of
Ethelred; and if it can be assumed that the six
substantive types were issued during periods of
equal duration, the type should have begun about
1003. The moneyers striking these helmet pennies
at Salisbury were Godwine, Goldus and Sæwine;
until that issue moneyers of those names were striking
pennies at Wilton. (fn. 25) The conclusion that these men
fled from Wilton and took refuge at Salisbury can
hardly be avoided, especially as Wilton probably did
not resume coining until the reign of Cnut. In the
last (small cross) issue of Ethelred, Ælfnoth and
Sæman were also issuing coins at Salisbury.
In the third (quatrefoil) issue of Cnut, Wilton
resumed with two moneyers (Ælfmaer and Ælfstan),
later adding Ælfwine, probably brought from Salisbury. In this issue Salisbury had Ælfnoth, Ælfred,
Ælfwine, Godwine, Goldus, Leofwold and Sæman,
adding in the fourth (helmet) issue Leofstan, and in
the sixth (arm and sceptre) Wineman. Ælfred and
Godwine continued under Harold I, with Winstan;
and Godwine under Harthacnut and Edward the
Confessor. Under Edward there were also Ælfwold,
Godric, Leofstan, Sæbode and Wineman; by comparison Wilton seems to have recovered, for it had
thirteen moneyers under the Confessor. (fn. 26)
It seems that Salisbury gained in importance
during the troublous period of the early 11th
century. Where the civil settlement was cannot be
stated with certainty. The church of St. Etheldreda,
which is found later, (fn. 27) probably belongs to this
period. It seems to have stood outside the defences.
There is no evidence of any clearance being necessary
to make room for the Norman castle on the crown of
the hilltop; and the disadvantages of the site for all
save defensive purposes make it likely that at this
period, as later, the burgesses normally lived outside
the ditch, betaking themselves within it only when
security required. (fn. 28)