Monday 18th August SALISBURY - WESTBURY
Robyn writes: It’s been a wonderful day today, our last day
before heading to London. The day started very cloudy and cool, and even a bit
drizzly. It was supposed to clear this afternoon to sunny patches, but never
really accomplished that, and a cool breeze has kept the temperature down on
yesterday. Very pleasant for walking around!
We started the day with a hotel breakfast at around 8 o’clock
in the downstairs restaurant area. Neither of us felt like a cooked breakfast,
and we had plenty of toast, fruit, cereals and pastries to choose from. After
that, Lex decided that he would head out to the White Horse and Iron Age Fort,
Bratton Camp, at Westbury, and I just wanted to have the day in Salisbury, as
there’s so much to see here.
As I had a bit of time to kill before the Cathedral opened,
I wandered up to the Old George Mall a few blocks away to see what was there.
It’s a bit like an open-air shopping mall inserted into a centuries-old block
of buildings! Salisbury sustained some bomb damage during the war, as it is so
close to the military installations on Salisbury Plain, so there are modern
buildings right next to Tudor or Georgian or Victorian ones. I had a nice look
around there, then took myself off to the Cathedral.
Salisbury’s Cathedral was originally located at Old Sarum,
not far from town. But by the 1100s and 1200s, residents complained bitterly
about the lack of water, and eventually they ended up deciding to build a new
cathedral down on the plain, near several rivers. (With the result that it
frequently flooded, and began to sink, but you can’t have everything.) It was completed
when the spire was raised in the 1300s, and as I’ve said, is a magnificent site
to behold. The interior is plainer than some we’ve visited, but still
spectacular with huge, soaring ceilings. I had a lovely couple of hours looking
at everything there – last time, we were a bit rushed, so this time I didn’t
have to hurry. There are some very impressive Medieval and Tudor graves – the biggest
being that of the Earl of Hertford, one of the Seymour family, and a nephew of
poor Jane Seymour who was Henry VIII’s third wife. His wife was Catherine Grey,
the sister of even more tragic Lady Jane Grey, who was Queen for 9 days.
Because of her royal connection, her effigy is raised above his on their
memorial! I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the Cathedral, especially because for
the whole time I was there, the organist was practising, so we definitely had
the soundtrack it deserved.
At about 11, I went in search of morning tea in the café there, which has a glass roof looking up at the Cathedral. Then I went for a walk through the cloisters, and into the Chapter House, where their copy of the Magna Carta is stored. It’s kept in a darkened nook, and photography is not allowed, but it is certainly something to see; such a momentous point in history, and so many of our laws are still based on it.
It was midday by the time I tore myself away from the Cathedral, and my next destination was just right across the Close. The National Trust maintains Mompesson House, a gorgeous Queen Anne townhouse there. It was built by the Mompesson family in the 1630s, but substantially remodelled by them in 1701. It’s presented as a perfect Regency house; styled how it would have been in the early 1800s. In fact, it’s such a perfect Regency house that it was used in the 1995 production of Sense & Sensibility with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslett and Alan Rickman. It was so good that they hardly had to bring any props at all. I must watch that movie again! As I was leaving, I noticed that they have a second-hand bookshop (many National Trust properties do) so I popped back to the hotel to get the book I’d just finished to donate it. I also found another book to take on our travels.
By now it was well after one, and I was hungry, so I thought I’d go back to the Cathedral Café for lunch. Unfortunately, many, many others had that same idea, so I went back to the mall and good old M&S café – always a tasty, inexpensive lunch. I was a bit weary by this stage, so headed back to the hotel again to put my feet up. Lex returned soon after, having taken quite a while to get back to town. The summer tourist rush is definitely on; the Stonehenge carpark was full as he went by, and the roundabout there gridlocked. He was stuck in stationary traffic for so long coming into town that he ended up turning around and going another way. After he’d had a cup of coffee, we decided to go to the Salisbury Museum.
This is an excellent little museum with two sections – a general
gallery on the history of the town, and the Wessex Gallery, which holds the
finds from centuries of archaeological digs in the area. It was truly impressive,
and there was so much to see – impossible to take it all in. We were there
pretty much until closing time.
Lex had a great morning at the Westbury site, and was really impressed with the size, shape and height of the Iron Age fort. To think that the ancients did all that with antler picks! The chalk horse (55 metres high) was cut into the hillside in 1778 by a Mr Gee on the site of an earlier horse. Incredibly, in the 1950s, it was concreted over, so what you see is actually concrete painted white. Some of the white horses in the UK are prehistoric – for example the Uffington White Horse is 3000 years old, but not this one….
Sadly, we’ve run out of time for Salisbury – I’m wishing we had another day, as I would really like to have seen Old Sarum and some of the other sites in the area, as well as go back to Stonehenge and see the replica Iron Age huts they’ve built. Next time!
We got changed for a last night out in Salisbury, and walked
uptown to find a place to eat. We found The Haunch of Venison, a pub on a site
dating back to the 1330s and a Tudor building! Appropriately, Lex had the
Venison burger, and I had a beef stroganoff – both very tasty.
Tomorrow comes the big travel day – drive to Heathrow Europcar, give the car back, shuttle bus to the airport, 2 trains to Sloane Square and pray our host is there to give us the key. All fingers crossed!
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