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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Salisbury
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(39,000 in 1991)
Cathedral town in Wiltshire, on the river Avon, with views over the meadows which have attracted many artists, most notably *Constable. The original settlement was at Old *Sarum, now an abandoned site just to the north of the town. Here an Iron Age hill fort was successively adapted by *Romans, *Anglo-Saxons and finally *Normans, who in the 11C built a castle and a cathedral side by side. Friction between the two caused the bishop to move a little way south and to start the present cathedral in 1220. The body of the church, in the *Early English style, was complete by 1258; the tower and spire (at 123m/404ft by far the tallest in the country) were added some 50 years later.
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The interior has been much tidied up in successive restorations, starting with that of *Wyatt, but it retains one very popular medieval detail – Britain's earliest clock mechanism, dating back to the 1380s and still working (it never had a clock face, its purpose being only to ring a bell in the tower). The Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum contains all the finds from nearby *Stonehenge. Over the centuries Old Sarum faded to nothing, being remembered now as the most rotten of all rotten *boroughs.
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