day 4

Day 4

Rainy morning. Decided go visited Old Sarum, as I had discovered a new route to Salisbury via Trowbridge and Warminster, close to the Sarum and Stonehenge. My inicial plan was going to the Old Sarum, an old fortress from the Iron Age (it’s been in use from 500 to 300 BC), but finds there are much older, some dating from 3000 BC.

Old Sarum, from the sky (top), and two renderings

Like most of the sites in the area, its been taken by the Romans, the Saxons and later by the Normans. It is the former site of the city of Salisbury, but around the 1220 it was moved some two miles south, closer to a better water supply. It is said that this also was due to a disagreement between the clergy and the military powers of the Old Sarum. The old castle and village were left in ruins. The New Sarum, or Salisbury got famous due to its new Cathedral with the highest tower in England, 123 meters and the University, but the Old Sarum was an important settlement at the Neolithic age, and one of the several alignments of Stonehenge.

house in Salisbury

Salisbury Cathedral: the tower, façade and details

Getting there took me around two hours, but I am getting used to the long bus travels. The main risk is loose the connection back in little town under the rain (let’s see Cerne Abbas tomorrow).
Warminster is a military city, and it seems that the whole area has military activity, until the surroundings from Stonehenge. Salisbury during the WWII held the production of the famous aircraft “Spitfire”.

OLD SARUM

entrance

I am not much affectionate to those touristic tours, but due to my time, the rain and the opportunity of visiting Stonehenge and the old Sarum in the same day, I decided to take the tour. Visiting the remains of the old fortress left clear that mo much evidence of the pre medieval settlement was left. The structure can be related, as the round top flat hills surrounded by a gap, the high place, the defensive structure, it all fits to the other settlements of this kind. Solsbury Hill, Silbury Hill, Glastonbury Tor, Old Sarum, they all resemble somehow. The remains of the old Cathedral are beautifully restored and marked on the ground, which can be seen from the top of the fortress.

inside the Old Sarum

the ditch around the Old Sarum

STONEHENGE

The second part of the tour was Stonehenge, the legendary and most famous stone circle. It is a unique construction, for its size and the structure. The reasons why it was erected it is still a mystery, and raises lots of theories, but none is conclusive. The idea of Stonehenge being an astronomical site, never been proved, at least in the terms we use today. For sure it have been a pilgrimage area for thousands of years, and there is a lot of burial mounds even older than the Stonehenge around. What can be taken from Stonehenge is that the ensemble was constructed at any point around 3000BC, but there is evidence of older occupation. The dozens burial monuments around it would be enough to make it one of the greatest sites in England. There were excavations in Stonehenge since the XVIII century but it took some time until the cience accept it was an native English construction.

There are two distincts kinds of stones in the group, the big ones that been brought from Marlbourough, a few miles at north (close to Avebury), and the blue smaller ones, which came by boat from Wales. These travels were not either impossible or rare, as we know today. Stones from all kinds been trade since immemorial times in England. Fragments of food been found in some burial graves in Stonehenge that been brought as far as central Europe.
The shape of the stones in Stonehenge are two circles of stones (although one is barely seen from the ground) and a shoe horse inside with the big triliths. There are theories about how it would have worked if it were an astronomical site, but the conclusions always been considered of poor evidence. No doubt is that the place been considered sacred and it been visited since its been there.

The most impressive in the present day Stonehenge is the amount of people which visits the site, even though is impossible to come close to the stones. This makes the visit somewhat odd, but it’s worth to think in it as an ancient and sacred site, as Avebury or Glastonbury.

visitors of Stonehenge