The History of Salisbury Cathedral: How Did They Move a Medieval Marvel?

Which cathedral is closest to the English heart?  Impossible to say but it may be Salisbury, the subject of this week’s Your Places or Mine.  On September 28 a special service will be held to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the dedication of the altars at Salisbury’s east end in 1225. 

To many people, Salisbury Cathedral approaches architectural perfection more nearly than any of the other cathedrals in England.  It is the most harmonious; the spire is the tallest (404 feet); and still see it surrounded by water meadows that are a survival of medieval farming practice. This was the view famously painted by John Constable.

Whereas other cathedral builders in the Middle Ages had to contend with previously developed sites, Salisbury’s Bishop Roger Poore had no such bother.  In 1219, he abandoned the previous cathedral at Old Sarum, which stood inside the banks of an Iron Age hill fort.  Old Sarum had little water and was inconveniently close to a castle full of disputatious knights.  ‘Let us descend joyfully to the plains, where the valley abounds in corn, where the fields are beautiful and where there is freedom from oppression,’ declaimed the papal bull of Honorius III which approved the move.  Poore and his unknown architect could lay out at the cathedral as they liked; except for the 14th spire, most of it was built over a period of sixty years – hence it is unified in style.  

Whereas the stone used to build Old Sarum had come from Caen in Normandy, Salisbury was made of English stones; the nave is an unusually disciplined essay in creamy Chilmark limestone, from around Tisbury in Wiltshire, and dark grey Purbeck ‘marble’ – not actually marble but a polished limestone -- from the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset.  Purbeck marble, rich in fossils, was also used for the floor.

John and Clive discuss all these points as well as controversial 18th and 19th century restorations, not to mention a clock that may be the old working piece of machinery in the world.