Salisbury Cathedral

Salisbury is one of England's most famous cathedrals. Building commenced in 1220 - late for an English cathedral, but we must remember that Salisbury grew only once the old hillfort city of Old Sarum was abandoned. The Norman cathedral at Old Sarum was built from 1075-1092.

The famous spire is England's tallest at 404 feet or 123 metres and leans around 27 inches from the vertical.

This is the oldest working clock in Europe. It was made in 1386 and originally installed in a bell tower that was demolished in 1798. It is still ticking away and the cathedral website informs us (and I love this!) that it has ticked more than 5 million times since it first started measuring the time! Actually it is probably two and a half million ticks and two and a half million tocks...

Despite never having been an abbey it has cloisters - not sure what it is about walking around a cloister but I always have to do it when visiting somewhere with one! And this is the largest cloister in England.

The great treasure of Salisbury is the best preserved copy of the original Magna Carta, agreed by King John at Runnymede on 15 June 1215 and which laid down the beginnings of English law, since copied around the world. Thirteen copies of the Magna Carta were made, only four of which still exist. Two are in the British Library and one lies at Lincoln within the castle. The one at Salisbury was taken originally to the cathedral at Old Sarum. It is written in extremely small writing on a single piece of parchment in Medieval Latin.

At Runnymede King John was urged to sign by his half brother, William Longspeé. A sculpture of this moment can be seen in the cathedral and William was buried there between two of the Nave pillars. In another wonderful bit of gossip, the cathedral website informs us that when his tomb was opened after many centuries there was a dead rat with traces of arsenic in it found lying inside his skull. A strange way to die, poisoned by a poisoned rat eating its way into your head - you'd have thought someone would have noticed and shooed it away... One possibility to be considered is that perhaps it was William who was poisoned and that the unfortunate rat chose the wrong head to eat into...

There are some fine carvings in the cathedral and the following photographs concentrate on them.

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Salisbury City and Cathedral

Monday 27 May 1998. Fran and I are on holiday in Wiltshire and have now left the ancient hilltop fort of Old Sarum and are in Salisbury.

As we emerge from the huge car park, our first view of Salisbury, is the river. It cuts under the shopping center in a huge black hole to emerge on the other side of the buildings, hissing and roaring over a wier. Facing the shopping centre and culvert we had to turn round to see this much more attractive view leading towards the old bridge with its arches.

There is an excellent covered market cross with some old half-timbered black and white buildings nearby.

Down one of the streets leading off this crossroads is this arched gateway. Going through it leads into the cathedral square.

Salisbury is one of England's most famous cathedrals. Building commenced in 1220 - late for an English cathedral, but we must remember that Salisbury grew only once the old hillfort city of Old Sarum was abandoned. The Norman cathedral at Old Sarum was built from 1075-1092.

The famous spire is England's tallest at 404 feet or 123 metres and leans around 27 inches from the vertical.

This is the oldest working clock in Europe. It was made in 1386 and originally installed in a bell tower that was demolished in 1798. It is still ticking away and the cathedral website informs us (and I love this!) that it has ticked more than 5 million times since it first started measuring the time! Actually it is probably two and a half million ticks and two and a half million tocks...

Despite never having been an abbey it has cloisters - not sure what it is about walking around a cloister but I always have to do it when visiting somewhere with one! And this is the largest cloister in England.

The great treasure of Salisbury is the best preserved copy of the original Magna Carta, agreed by King John at Runnymede on 15 June 1215 and which laid down the beginnings of English law, since copied around the world. Thirteen copies of the Magna Carta were made, only four of which still exist. Two are in the British Library and one lies at Lincoln within the castle. The one at Salisbury was taken originally to the cathedral at Old Sarum.

At Runnymede King John was urged to sign by his half brother, William Longspeé. A sculpture of this moment can be seen in the cathedral and William was buried there. In another wonderful bit of gossip, the cathedral website informs us that when his tomb was opened after many centuries there was a dead rat with traces of arsenic in it found lying inside his skull. A strange way to die, poisoned by a carrier rat eating its way into your head - you'd have thought someone would have noticed and shooed it away...

Return to Wiltshire, Cotswolds and Avon 1998 Index

Lunchtime in Lincoln

I've been to Lincoln today for an afternoon meeting with some people at the university and having arrived just before lunch, parked in the old part of the city and went to find something to eat there.

There were lots of school trips going on - everywhere were uniformed children with clipboards, looking for things they had on a list to find, drawing the castle or cathedral and somewhat bizarrely in a small group in an alley listening to a man dressed in a toga... Lucius Dressdus...

The castle is imposing and stands squarely facing the equally impressive gateway to the cathedral.

This is pretty much a building in its own right that has a gateway cut through it. It makes entering the Cathedral grounds something of an experience.

The cathedral houses one of the original copies of King John's Magna Carta document and a nearby pub is called the Magna Carta to commemorate the fact. Not that Clive and myself knew or thought to ask why it was called that when we called for a pint a few years ago whilst in the city to deliver a workshop...

There's an incredibly steep and long shopping street that leads from the castle and cathedral's hilltop to the modern city below.

They call it The Health Walk these days, but then every night you can take one of several ghost tours which probably list off all the people down the ages who have had heart attacks and died whilst walking back up...

Nearby is this very ancient Roman archway over the road - one of the original gates into the Roman city. It had a close call with a rather too large lorry in 1964, the damage costing over 1500 pounds to repair. And before anyone thinks that's not a lot, you could buy around 80 Mars Bars for a pound in 1964. A useful measure of worth, the Mars Bar, I always think!

Great Music

I thought it might be fun to show some of the albums I've collected over the years which are not exactly mainstream. I have a huge collection of music including some 400+ 78rpm records, a thousand or so vinyl 45s and around 300 vinyl albums plus lots and lots of CDs.

I've digitised a lot of the music myself - particularly the 78s which can be hard to find on CD. So here are five of my albums which you may not have heard of, starting with the one that you are most likely to have heard of. It's possibly true to say that any readers over on the US side of the Atlantic may have a better chance of having heard of some of the following.

But we start with this one- The Beat of The Brass by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

I was still a teenager when I bought this and the music from the record was featured in a TV special recorded by the band. It's a very laid back record that starts with a version of Cabaret and ends with Herb's only vocal hit - This Guy's In Love With You. One of my favourite tracks is a jazzy thing called Slick. And a bit of trivia for you - Herb Alpert is the 'A' of A&M Records.

The Cactus Brothers

What can I say about this album? It wasn't even available in the UK when I bought it. We were in Florida on holiday in 1993 and I wanted to bring some of the music back that we were hearing on the car radio. I plucked this one off the shelves purely at random but have never regretted it and I play this album as much as any of the others in my collection. It is a country hillbilly group with a large collection of motley characters playing fast driving country rock and with a couple of finger pickin' instrumentals thrown in for good measure. It starts with a hard smacking version of Sixteen Tons and there's loads of superb tracks to savour.

Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen

I was introduced to this one by John Briggs, who was bass player with a group I was in called Spiral, way back in the early 1970s. He played it to me after we had listened to our traditional playing of his 78rpm version of the Everly's All I Have To Do Is Dream c/w Claudette and it knocked my socks off. There's a track called Boogie Man Boogie with some of the best boogie piano playing I have ever heard. Again though, this is an album without a single mediocre track!

In Search of Amelia Earheart by Plainsong

A strange mixture this one. It looks like a concept album but only two of the songs are about the titular flyer and her probable doom at the hands of the Japanese. The rest are a mixture of songs of the soft folk rock type. The band featured Ian Matthews, of Matthews Southern Comfort fame and Liverpool Scene guitarist Andy Roberts. I bought it after hearing them on a BBC radio In Concert programme.

Songs From Wasties Orchard by Magna Carta

Now if you like modern folk music or even just nice gentle sounds then this album has to be one of the ultimates! Best known for their concept album Seasons, which was their second album, this was the follow up with soon-to-be Elton John's guitarist, Davy Johnstone replacing Aussie Lyell Tranter full time. (He had played on Seasons as a session musician). I went to see them at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester as this album was coming out and they were absolutely superb.