WILTSHIRE: A Salisbury Walk

Archeologists still disagree about what are the earliest parts of the church, but - despite the claim on the sign in Silver Street - it's unlikely that you'll see much in the church that was built prior to the early 15th. century (although one theory holds that there's part of a late 13th. Century arch in the north-east corner of the Lady Chapel, if you look really hard...)

However, the current church is believed to have been built on the site that was "the first active place of worship in New Sarum." The original Church is believed to have been a small wooden chapel built by Bishop Richard Poore in 1220 as a place where the men working on the new Cathedral and town could worship. It was replaced from 1226 by a small stone church with a crucifix shape (nave, choir/quire and transcepts) dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury, to which a St Stephen Chapel was added at the end of the century.

The current belltower was built in the early 1400s as a separate structure, but still with an arched walkway beneath. It was the collapse of the choir and chapel in 1447 that precipitated the progressive rebuilding of the church into the perpendicular Gothic style we see today - with the nave and choir replaced, two chapels added and then the two aisles that finally gave the church it's wide and largely rectangular shape, with the belltower as the entrance.

Our first impressions on entering St Thomas's Church were that it is unusually bright and airy. There are large leaded windows along the length of both aisles, both sides of the the upper part of the nave (above the aisle rooves) and taking up much of the wall above the western door. These all use clear glass (only the altar window now has stained glass - the Lady Chapel stains were destroyed in the Reformation,) so the sunlight is not dimmed and I found that this provided enough light to take even handheld photographs (those below) at ISO 200.

This was not always the case. Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure described the church as a "gloomy place," with the surrounding wooden galleries and the gentry's box-pews (all now removed) blocking out the window-light.

Unusually the rooves of the nave and choir - and the barely sloped rooves of the aisles - are all lined with natural wood panelling - only gilded on the ceiling supports. This also seems to emphasise the height and "lack of weight" in the church in a way that vaulted stone ceilings do not (despite their lighter colour.) The nave and choir are proportionally quite narrow, with the wide but relatively low aisles presumably providing enough support to allow so many large windows to be built without additional buttressing.

The church's most famous feature is a large mural on the chancel arch, commonly known as the Doom Painting. This is not the word "doom" in the negative sense we understand it today (viz. "he was doomed to...") but in the Anglo-Saxon sense, which means "judgement." (Medieval representations of the Last Judgement were once very common in churches throughout Europe.) It's believed to be the largest - and certainly best preserved - of its type in England and is said to have been painted by a parishioner in 1475, as thanks for a safe pilgrimage.

The mural features Christ and the 12 Apostles in the City of God (at the top,) with people rising for the Last Judgement (lower left,) and people - including nobles and a Bishop (!) - being marshalled into Hell's Mouth by demons (lower right to us, but to Jesus's left, where the goats ought to be.) The muted colouration somehow adds to the picture's mystical antiquity. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition website reports that: One hell-bound woman is said to be Agnes Bottenham, who ran a brothel in Trinity Street. Eventually, she repented her sins and is reputed to have founded Trinity Hospital as a penance(!)

Although the Church was Catholic at the time of its foundation, by the Tudor and Stuart era it had been overtaken by exteme Protestant "reformers". The mural was obliterated with white-wash in 1593 and forgotten - a clear reminder that the blinkered and fanatical impact of abstractive religiosity in no way began with Muslim terrorists!

Fortunately the painting was re-discovered in 1819, when the whitewash was carefully removed and the painting reproduced (not especially reliably) on paper. Inexplicably, however, it was then whitewashed again(!) and full restoration did not start until 1881. The most recent restoration process dates from 1953 and has rendered the magnificence of the painting clear, bright, and ready to inspire (or perhaps terrify) the souls of future faithful.

Three more paintings from the late 15th century can be found in the Lady Chapel, which today is more like a continuation of the south aisle than an enclosed space. The Lady Chapel was once much more ornately decorated, with stained glass windows, but much of this was also destroyed by doctrinaire "Reformation" vandals.

The three small murals showing the Annunciation, the Visitation and the Adoration of the Magi somehow survived - although, unhappily, another set of three on the opposing wall has been lost for ever. The entry on The Painted Church website notes that:

Paintings of the Visitation, the post-Annunciation meeting of the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, then awaiting the birth of the child who would become John the Baptist, are now quite rare in the English church. Possibly, and despite the fact that the event is Scriptural, this is because incidents in the Life of the Virgin came in for particular iconoclastic attention (from Protestants.) But some medieval churchmen seem to have found depictions of a visibly pregnant Virgin (or Elizabeth) indecorous in themselves, so constraints of this kind may have been operating. (However) the painter here clearly had no reservations about making the pregnancies very explicit through the gestures of Mary and her cousin. Mary, her hair loose in token of her perpetual virginity, is at the left, with Elizabeth, soberly dressed as a matron of the day, to the right ... The symbolic lily-pots and the Orders of the Garter painted on the background form a repeating pattern surrounding all three subjects.

The church's remarkable paintings testify to the awed spirituality of the medieval worldview - where the bliss of Heaven and unending terror of Hell were serious and pressing concerns - in a way that the more restrained interior of Salisbury Cathedral really doesn't.

The church also contains some paintings in chancel alcoves, although these may date from Victorian times. There are also non-ecclesiastical paintings, featuring heraldry and coats of arms of noble families. The Royal Coat Of Arms - above - dates from the time of good Queen Bess, when all churches were required to put it on the chancel arch, once the rood screen was removed.

Although it hung for centuries on top of the whitewashed Doom painting, it now hangs above the entry to St Michael’s Room (under the belltower,) The arms date from about 1580 when the queen paid £8 for the painting and £4 for the frame. The arms are supported by a lion and dragon rampant and bracketed by two Tudor roses. (The Scottish unicorn only replaced the Welsh dragon when James I took the throne in 1603.)

For a much more complete history of the Church of St Thomas Becket and the Doom Painting it's well worth downloading the parish's own fact-packed PDF files. All three of them are accessible from this page from the St Thomas's Church website.

Inspired by St Thomas (and having left a donation in the box near the door) you're ready to exit the Church for a bit of exercise. Turning left into Silver Street, walk past Caffè Nero and Wagamama until the ground opens out on the right to reveal the front of The Mill.

The Mill itself can be reached via a small pedestrian bridge. But if you don't want refreshments you can either stop on the bridge and check out the view of the old mill-race or bear right and take a closer look from the set of railings designed to stop you falling into the Avon's churning white water as it emerges from under the building and tumbles over a weir .

This branch of the Avon (the one that passed under the Library bridge) and the "twin" branch (near the Maltings toilets) rejoin just downstream of this little weir, between the Mill's lawn and road bridge. Having split near the top of the Central Car Park, this means that they form a half-kilometer long island with The Mill at the bottom-most point!)

The current Mill building (number "2" on our map) is a flint-faced 18th Century building that's now used as a pub/restuarant. It has patio dining - although, unfortunately, it seems to feature what's jovially called a "traditional English menu", which here seems to mean Fish and Chips, Real Ales, Burgers, Real Ales, Steaks, Real Ales, Vegetable Chilli Ramen (presumably they couldn't find anything English that wasn't for carnivors or hop-addicts - maybe that's what the squid was giggling at...) and, of course, Real Ales.

The current building is worth a passing look, although it's a pity that its medieval precursors didn't survive to the present day. The original structure is said to have been entered into the Domesday Book as belonging to a Bishop of Old Sarum over 130 years before the foundation of Salisbury by Bishop Richard Poore. But as to detail about this building (what kind of mill it was and what the mill-race was driving, for example,) information is hard to find. One source said that before the foundation of Salisbury is was used to grind corn, but whether that use continued as the town grew around it can only be guessed at. I've only found a few scant paragraphs on the pub's website (which were clearly written by someone with a garbled sense of history.)

As you cross back over the Mill's pedestrian bridge, where Bridge Street joins Fisherton Street, there's a pedestrian crossing that will bring you to the honey-coloured stonework of the King's Head Hotel. Despite the apparent use of leaded windows which strongly echo the design used in St Ann's Street's 17th Century Joiners Hall, this is actually a Victorian Revivalist building that was only built in 1874 (or the 1880's, depending on what website you look at) - which probably explains why we didn't photograph it at the time. (The street frontage is also north facing, so it would have been in shadow.) However, it does have a pleasant stone oriel window overlooking the Avon, which also uses the Joiner's Hall patterned windows, but is reminiscent in shape and colour to some of those in Oxford (e.g. in Catte Street) although admittedly less ornate.The structure is also interesting for its chimenys and gables which look to use a different style and stone to the lower part.

This building replaced a no-doubt more interesting pub - also the King's Head - which had a long and more interesting history. According to one source the Victorian building was bullt for the Richardson brothers, who owned Britain's oldest wine and spirit business. It later became the County Hotel, before reverting to the name King's Head again. It's now a Wetherspoon pub, and is entirely modern inside. (We haven't found a good photograph of it and only added it as an afterthought, which is why it carries the non-sequential black marker on our map.)

The pub shouldn't be confused with the King's Arms hotel in St John's Street, which we'll get to later.Rejoining the main road and crossing the road bridge into Fisherton Street, you'll find a Slug and Lettuce Cocktail-Bar-Cum-Snackhouse (from the name it seems there is something for both carnivors and vegetarians here, although veggies may worry about getting them in their salad at the same time...) Opposite this, there's a stone clock-tower.

It's the clock-tower that's the more interesting (although the Slug's building is also quite intriguing - with a roof that seems crooked enough to be original, but a fascia that is far to flat and regular to be the medieval timber-frame it's pretending to be...)

In the way of English humour, the Fisherton Street clock-tower is known locally as Little Ben. It's reputed to have been commissioned in 1892 by one Dr John Roberts as a memorial for his wife, whom he'd lost the previous year. A carved plaque in the stone base of the tower depicts some manacles! This only makes sense when you know that the tower was built on the site of the old Fisherton Gaol. (Most of the gaol had been demolished about 50 years earlier.)

The picture also shows a passing double-decker from the Salisbury Reds bus company, which runs routes through and around the city - decked, we might say,in a bright but sober dark red livery which is in keeping with this ancient city (unlike the hot lilac and blue livery of buses in Bath, for example!)

Continuing up Fisherton Street you'll find little of historical interest so, having crossed yet another parallel vein of the (Hampshire) Avon, turn immediately left down Water Lane, which is a pedestrian pathway running along the right bank of the stream. Or if you want a snack, go a bit further on Fishton Street and check out the Fisherton Mill Gallery and Cafe first. It's a large commercial gallery biased more towards craft than art, with studios on the premises.

Fisherton Mill was a Victorian grain mill, built by William Main & Sons in 1880 and recently restored to highlight its original pillars, high ceilings, and cast-iron beams. It was situated on the Market House railway siding from the station to the Market House (now the City Library,) but also had stables for horses and carts. Mechanisation and new farming methods led the Main family to diversify into horticulture and the Mill closed in 1984. By the end of 1993, it faced dereliction, but the great-grandsons of the founder have saved it by reinvented it as gallery, with the stables converted into artisans' workshops. The owners claim that it is the only industrial building left standing in Salisbury's medieval city centre. It's not clear from the Mill's website what powered the Mill, but it seems to far from the line of the Avon to have been water-powered, we think.

The walk up Water Lane path is quite short, but it will soon give you your first clear view of Salisbury Cathedral, the visual hub around which our route slowly gyrates for the next 4 kilometers.

This branch of the Avon passes under the road, but soon reappears in greener guise as part of the small and well-trimmed Queen Elizabeth Gardens, where it is shaded by water-loving trees like the weeping willow.

 

Our map shows the route as being along Cranebridge Road for about 50m before entering the Gardens in the north-east corner, but you can go straight across if you wish. On the south-western side of the gardens the branch of the river we've been following meets two other branches, which also converge at this point

We've seen it written that branch of the Avon that runs through the gardens was diverted there artificially, to make the garden more attractive. If this is true, then it's hard to see where it was diverted from, unless the channel was once closer to the road and joined the main branch of the Avon down the side of Mill Road.

If you're wondering why we keep talking about the (Hampshire) Avon, by the way, it's not just to distinguish it from the Stratford-Upon-Avon Avon or the Bath and Bristol Avon, but actually from a total of four river Avons that can be found in England and a further three that are in Scotland. It's a popular name - and for a very good reason! The name "Avon" comes from the Celtic word "abon" (which persists in the Welsh word "afon") - all of which mean "river." (So, if you're bilingual Welsh, "River Avon"probably feels a bit like saying "River River" ;-)

But anyway, we've made the point now, so it will just be "Avon" for the rest of this article and we'll leave it in peace to flow on to Christchurch, where it joins with the Stour on its way to the sea...

Having relaxed in the sun, walked along the river edges and smiled at the children paddling in the shallow waters, we headed to the north-eastern corner of the Queen Elizabeth Gardens and crossed the a larger river channel on to Town Path. This tarmac'd footpath heads diagonally south-south-west across Salisbury's Water Meadows for about half a kilometer.

The Water Meadows look like a large, undeveloped stretch of countryside. But they are, in fact, an island ringed by two rivers that join south of the Cathedral. The River Nadder feeds into the western side of the circle and the parts of the Avon we have been describing feed into the eastern side.

There is some disagreement between map-makers as to whether the river bordering the island on the northern and western sides is the Avon or the Nadder. Google maps we use here show the entire ring being parts of the Avon, Ordnance Survey maps mark the river to the north-west as the Nadder, while OpenStreetMaps have both the north-west and south as the Nadder.

Documents about Harnham seem to support the idea that the Nadder runs along both the north-west and south sides of the ring around the 'island' and, logically, it makes more sense, so we're guessing that this is the likely option. Looking at Ordnance Survey maps, by the way, you can see that the meadow inside the ring is a mass of blue striations, showing a network of blue gullies running at right-angles to the river. It's unclear as to how the map-makers decide when to show a gully as being filled water, rather than dry land, but the number of blue lines on the maps certainly make it obvious as to why these are called "water meadows!"

Town Path is also prone to flooding after heavy rain, with patches of water often left to form marshy areas in the fields as the water subsides. A wide, walled ditch has been built along the side of the path to keep it drained, although it's success has always been limited. At the time we visited it was so full of tall rushes, that it was hard to see down into the water through the stems - so maybe it gets too choked to be effective. (Apologies for the photo, BTW. It was shot against the sun.)

Besides offering a pleasant walk through grazing sheep, the great wonder of Town Path is the view of the distant Cathedral spire, which thrusts up from behind the trees that line the distant line of the River Avon in its attempt to puncture the sky. This view wasw once voted ‘The Best View in Britain’ by readers of Country Life magazine.

Presumably because of the flooding, Salisbury's Water Meadow 'island' has remained a pastoral foreground for the Cathedral that has avoided development (although the narrow sliver of Fisherton Island - in the northern part of the 'ring' - now has houses on it and may be a warning for the future.) For now, however, the Water Meadows continue to provide the wide panorama that has been so dear to a succession of painters, from the Romantic era onwards. These include famed landscape and architectural artists like John Constable, and the young J.M.W Turner - although (as the city's galleries show) they've by no means been the only ones.

The most famous of the scenic works is probably Constable's Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows. There are a number of versions of this, including some expressionistic studies that look more like late Turner - although the most admired version is probably the more polished and detailed 1831 version, which has a cart fording the river in the foreground.

As far as we know, none of the famous works by Constable can actually be seen on permanent exhibition in Salisbury, although the 1831 painting was bought in 2013 by a consortium of museums - which included the Salisbury and south Wiltshire Museum (opposite the west side of the Cathedral) - so maybe it will come home and be shown there in the not-too-distant future. (At the moment it seems to spend most time cycling itself through the Tate in London, the National Museum Wales and the National Galleries of Scotland.) Other Constables featuring Salisbury can be found in London's V&A.

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows was created a year after the death of Constable's wife and is recognised as strongly symbolic, with the dark clouds that mirror the turmoil and anguish of the artist's soul being set against the rock of the Cathedral, symbolising unbreakable faith. There is also the further symbolism in the rainbow (the biblical motif of God's covenant and hence of Hope) and the waggoner (suggestive of human endurance and perserverance against adversity.) Another reassurance of the security of the Christian faith can be seen in the form of the St Thomas bell-tower, on the left.

It's not just the sky that is threatening. The whole painting is emblematic of Nature's chaos, with the blasted or wind-whipped trees and the tangle of the briar-ripped undergrowth all threatening the waggoner, who just pulls his collar tighter, and persists...

One curiosity is the nature of the painting's rainbow, which is curiously glass-like and solid looking - and in many ways it spoils the work. We all know what a real rainbow looks like, after all! But the composition would be less strong without it, as it acts almost like a barrier - radiating from the cathedral to protect it from the storm.

It's hard to identify where Constable positioned himself to make the painting from a modern map. Today's rivers don't seem to join in the way he shows, so either their course has been altered or there's a good deal of artistic licence being exercised here. If the claim that one branch of the stream was diverted to enliven the Queen Elizabeth Garden, then the former may possibly be the correct alternative. But in any case, if the perspective of the Cathedral was drawn correctly, then Constable must have been on the side of the river opposite the Water Meadows, at a spot that is in some way blocked or doesn't exist today.

Yet, regardless of these specifics, the strong counterpoint of the spire and the heavens that Constable portrays is just as obvious to anyone who walks down Town Path today as it was for the artist. You don't need the sensitivity or passion of a Constable to be struck by the reckless defiance shown by the ancient master-masons in the face of the marshy ground and the ever-threatening flux of the clouds in the canopy above!

It's the Cathedral's audacious spire that brings wonder to the view. Had the Cathedral been built with a castellated tower or made from darker stone, it would not have the same striking impact as it still does today. The light Purbeck stone from which the Cathedral was fashioned somehow gives it the luminous - almost translucent - quality that you would expect to find more in the crystalline towers of faery tales or early chivalric myths like those raked by the Arthurian chronicles.

The spire's sharp needle is a clear emblem of Human aspiration and the Human dedication to an advancing Evolution that defies all odds. The spire is Excalibur - not thrust down into rock, but thrust up from the waters by ancient Earth spirits, to stand bright, proud and protective against the vicissitudes of wind, rain and misfortune. The spire has a magical dualism that is both at one with Nature (like the natural spires of the Old Harry Rocks) and a proactive metaphor of Humankind's ability to harness Nature - born from their own naïve faith in their ability to progress and survive, then forged by the fires of experience into the glinting fortitude of creativity and invention, millennia upon millennia.

You don't need an established faith to feel the power of this place - just a welcoming receptiveness to the Natural World and an awareness of our apparently contradictory rôle as both acolytes and leaders within it.

Well, these were my interpretations, anyway, as I was caught up by the euphoric mood that ran through me as I tried to encapsulate and immolate the beauty of the scene in my lens (!) - although, in truth, I also sensed an accompanying - almost subliminal - awareness that this scene could be interpreted otherwise and that, under the calmness, it was swirling with its own flux and contradictions.

As the clouds changed, so did the influence on my mind and the drift of my emotions. Now the scene appeared like a Taoist painting, with the white purity of the buildings in balanced harmony with the natural world. Now it was a scene from Thomas Hardy's Wessex, with oppressive clouds dwarfing the tiny spire and mocking the presumption of Man's pointless bravado. Nature is never still and pulls on the subconscious like the Moon pulls the restless sea...

It is little wonder that the finely tuned perceptions of artists had been drawn to this place, at various times and various moods. But they had practical concerns too. The light and the weather had to be commensurate with that beauty.

We were lucky that we had chosen the right time for the walk. The descending afternoon sun was striking the western face of the Cathedral, yet was still modelled it for the camera. Unlike artists with the talent to use paint and oil, however, the photographer cannot leave out the inconvenient 'whatevers'. Even with digital software there's a limit to what you can correct.

The rushes in the drainage ditch - though attractive in themselves, were an inconvenience to the view, and I found myself standing on the benches that were strewn along the path in order to get an unincumbered shot of the Cathedral behind the sheep in the pasture. As my mind reverted to humdrum technicality I found myself wondering how how evergreen they were, and whether winter or early spring may reduce their impact.

You can see from this photograph that at the time we made the walk the rushes were effectively a hedgerow 6 foot high and 6 foot broad!

The camera icons on our map show the rough locations of the 4 positions from which I took shots shown here, although some may not be easy to match on the ground. In practice you just have to walk along looking for benches, or fences or gaps in the reeds or gateways through which you can peer unimpeded across the eastern Meadow to the Cathedral.

Yet despite the difficulties I found myself shooting far more frames than was sensible and for paid dearly later as I spend time poring over my virtual lightbox! With so much that can move in the frame there's always the doubt that you may not have chosen the best shot and doubts nag that maybe the clouds looked better in another, or the sheep had walked into a better pattern.

The presence of the sheep, quietly grazing the rich grass was - like the spire to Constable - a calming influence that ignored the capricious clouds. In Christian terms they were very appropriate to the ecclesiastical backdrop and it was easy to see that their unhurried rumination could revive a sense of spiritual security to a doubting pilgrim.

This was a true pastoral scene that echoed the essentially pastoral nature of Bishops and Evangelists: followers of Jesus himself, who was shepherd who knew his sheep and shielded them from the wolves who were "red in tooth and claw."

Yet even in less Christian terms, sheep are somehow a Natural symbol of peace and thoughtlessness and I found, as watched them, the melody of Beethoven's 6th Symphony running through my head to the accompaniment of overly bucolic imaginings - like jolly rustics in smocks, who seemed to infiltrate much Victorian art. (A far cry from Victorian reality, where old or disabled farmhands easily could end up in the depressing workhouses run by stingey councillors...)

Was the tranquility we like to see in Victroian pastorals merely an escapist bulwark against the stinking reality of Dickensian London or Hardy's hiring-fair labourers digging turnips from the frozen ground in winter?

As the clouds changed, so did the influence on my mind...

Poverty and destitution may have been the realities suffered by the Unfortunate in Plantagenet Sarisberie too, but the city continued to grow and prosper.

Even more than today, much of business in the Middle Ages was due to location, location, location - and Medieval Salisbury was well located. Before the coming of the canals and railways, trade was conducted by water or by road, and Salisbury was on the crossroads of two ox-cart highways. north to south there was the road from Wilton to the port of southampton, which could access trade with Europe and beyond. The east to west road ran from London to Exeter - which were both important Medieval towns and had a healthy volume of trade flowing between them.

Initially the carriers had to ford the Avon and although it was not deep and had a firm base for most of the year, there were times of heavy rainfall when passage was barred by flood. The townsfolk built a stone bridge across the Avon, and from 1244, the traffic flow increased - as did the number of traders spending time and money in the urban centre.

But for all the benefits of trade, wealth in the era came primarily from the bounty of the land (and from the skilled hands that could add value to it.) The main industries in Medieval Salisbury revolved around sheep. Sheep were sheared. Wool was traded. Wool was carded, was woven into wool-cloth, was "fulled" by beating it with watermill-driven hammers in a mixture of soft clay called "Fuller's Earth" to clean and thicken it. Wool was dyed and wool was exported through southampton - mostly as cloth bales, but sometimes as garments.

Leather working was also an important industry and the city's workforce became experts in producing everything from cured hides to shoes and saddles.

City artisans even established an envied reputation for the production of small - but finely crafted - steel items such as cutlery and swords. This is much more surprising, given that the ore and minerals used for smelting were not common in the region and the majority would have needed to be imported. Ultimately this was the sector's undoing. The steel industry declined during the 17th and 18th centuries, as more competitive factories in Sheffield and Birmingham got into their stride.

At a time when there are cities in the world with populations over 20 million, it seems laughable when we find Salisbury to have had, by the 15th century, a healthy population of 8,000! Yet this was enough to make it one of the larger towns in England!

The presence and expansion of the Cathedral also continued to grow the city's importance as a centre of faith and education. In 1269 Salisbury was wealthy enough to be divided into 3 parishes. The Bishops Palace was built in the 13th century, so were two friaries: for the Franciscans "Grey Friars" and the Dominican "Black Friars." (Roads named after them - Blackfriars Way and Greyfriars Close - can still be found near the St. Ann Gate today.)

Then, in the late 14th century, monks founded a hospital - the Hospital of the Holy Trinity - where the poor and sick could seek refuge and solace.

The influx of clergy also developed Salisbury into a famous centre of learning - for which the city claimed credit although, actually, the foundations for this had already been laid in Old Sarum.

Old Sarum's cathedral school was renowned for its educational success and even gave opportunities to talented Saxons (like the celebrated twelfth century English historian now called John of Salisbury) to gain a top-rate education. When the Bishop's seat was moved to New Sarum by Richard Poore, the Cathedral School was, of course, moved with it - although the expectation that the town would spawn its own Oxbridge-style University has never matured.

In the Middle Ages universities were usually not consciously founded, but emerged gradually as towns attracted distinguished teachers who in turn attracted talented scholars (who attracted more teachers and more scholars until the numbers grew so large that a body needed to be established to organise the courses and grant degrees.)

Salisbury became associated with two of the most respected 13th Century teachers - both of whom spent time as canons at Salisbury Cathedral. These were Edmund Rich (canonized as St. Edmund in 1248) and Robert Grosseteste, (who later became an Oxford professor and Bishop of Lincoln.) Although neither Rich nor Grosseteste actually taught at Salisbury, their association with the cathedral was enough to greatly enhance the city's prestige.

Oxford was developing as a seat of learning at about the same time, but the influx of scholars caused such resentment among the townspeople that there were frequent riots and fights between "town and gown." There had been trouble as early as 1209 when an Oxford woman was killed by students, and three students were lynched in reprisal. In 1238 a fight broke out between students and the retinue of a Papal Legate called Cardinal Otho. The Cardinal's brother was killed and the Cardinal himself forced to flee Oxford in the night. And so it went on, until the hosility culminated in the St Scholastica Day riot of 1355, in which a total of 93 scholars and Oxford townspeople died!

Each time Oxford grew unsafe, many students deserted it. Some went to Cambridge, some to Paris - and some to Salisbury, where classes were offered by the Dominican friars and a new library with classrooms and desks was built to accomodate the scholastic influx. Bishop Giles of Brideport established De Vaux College to provide housing and scholarships for twenty poor students, while Bishop Walter de la Wyle provided stipends for graduate students or teachers via the College of St. Edmund.

But somehow Oxford always remained ahead and always managed to attract - or attract back - Salisbury's finest minds. De Vaux College continued to run courses in Salisburyfor many decades - although increasingly its students spent only part of the year studying there, with the other part spent in Oxford. Finally, in 1545, it too was dissolved.

The disappearance of De Vaux College probably marked the end of Salisbury's ambitions to be a University, but it by no means ended Salisbury as a scholastic centre. Sarum College, Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury Cathedral School and Leaden Hall School still remain clustered around the Cathedral and it's apparent from the conversations you hear around the city that educational attainment is still high here.

The end of Town Walk is marked by trees, where it transitions into a causeway, and then a footbridge, that walkers can use to cross the river. This point is less than 200 metres from where the Nadder splits into two sides of the ring of water that surrounds the Water Meadows. It's also almost due west of the Cathedral, although only half of the Cathedral's west face is visible through the trees and over the brick buildings clustered on the western side of the Cathedral Close.

Once across the river you are in Harnham - classified since 1903 as a suburb of Salisbury, but originally two villages: east and west Harnham (the latter of which had its own Parish Church.) These are not recent settlements. Archeologists have unearthed evidence of human habitation in the Harnham area that dates from the Iron Age.

The river is wider at this point, and has obviously been subjected to works that havemanipulating its course - probably to funnel it through the Old (Harnham) Mill described after the next picture.)

We mentioned earlier how some map-makers say this is the River Nadder and some the Avon, but descriptions of Harnham always seem refer to it as the Nadder, so the local people seem certain enough.

After crossing the pedestrian bridge you find yourself walking next to a cluster of buildings that appear to be on their own island. In fact they are on a small peninsula. The earliest buildings belonged to the church and the detailing around the doors and windows of the current Old Mill Hotel are said to date from this period (circa 1250.)

The main structure of the existing Old Mill building dates from the 16th Century, when it was converted from ecclesiastical use to become Wiltshire's first paper mill and the river was diverted to flow under it. Looking at the map it seems likely that the earlier buildings were on the bank of the river, but that those banks were cut away to form the peninsula we see today, with the Mill at its tip.

We've not discoved when the buildings were made into The Old Mill Hotel, but the oldest part of the building is Grade 1 listed and we're told that the mill race can still be seen via a viewing window in the hotel restaurant - so you'll need to have a meal there to see it fully! (Less hungry people can satisfy themselves with the view of the water rushing out of the mill-race through two portals in the base of the building from the outside. instead...)

The arc of the oldest part of the hotel, and what is obviously a much more recent building providing the bulk of the accomodation, both face almost due east - so late afternoon is definitely the wrong time to get a photograph, as by this time it is almost entirely in shade. By the time we reached the Old Mill on our initial walk it was already too late and I returned on a later date at a slightly earlier time, when there was a clear sky and at least a little sunlight cutting across the front of the buildings.

For fully lit shots, though, the morning is probably the time to be here.

The original mill building was built from a broad mix of materials - but it's right on the pavement so it's easy to get up close and personal as you check them out!

The upper level is constructed from light-red bricks, while the lower level is more massive - with stone lintels, doors frames and window frames. The facia alternates limestone and knapped flint, to form a chequer pattern that is quite common on medieval and Tudor buildings in this area. The door is also made of heavy wood and is reminiscent of church architecture from the same period.

The main reason we returned to Harnham for a second time was not to re-photograph the Old Mill, but to get a shot of The Church of St George - the original parish church for west Harnham village, which we'd not known about when we made the first walk. (We'd just carried on down the bank of the Nadder, back towards the Cathedral.)

The Church is only about 200m away from the Old Mill, so it's worth a quick look if you're interested in early churches - although you probably won't be able to go in. Just walk past the old Mill and keep in the same direction down the road until you reach a T-junction by a thatched terrace. This is Lower Road. Turn left then immediately right. The church is now surrounded by a mix of 19th and 20th century brick dwellings.

St. George's Church is thought to date from early Norman (or possibly even from Saxon) times and some rounded (as opposed to Gothic arched) windows and doorways still remain, although these are quite small and the church must be rather dark inside. Some people date the original church to 1115 - a century before Salisbury was founded.

The church is known to have been expanded in the 13th and 14th Centuries when the chancel was lengthened and a mural painted on the chancel arch. A lot of the church was also rebuilt in the Early English style (the style of Salisbury Cathedral) and a Lady Chapel was added.

Work on the church also continued in the 15th. century and there are corbel bosses which are thought to feature local people from the time. That's what we're told anyway.

Work on St George's didn't end in the Middle Ages. Deterioration in the Norman north tower meant that it had to be replaced circa 1873 in a "restoration" project undertaken by William Butterfield - a Gothic Revival Victorian who somehow managed to reconcile his Gothic taste with the use of bricks (sometimes with white and blue brick patterned into the predominant red.)

Butterfield is most famous for his construction of Keble College Oxford - a brickwork college that stands out like a sore thumb among the older stone colleges of the ancient city, although luckily it is tucked away near the Science Labs and looks much nicer from inside its large quads than it does from the street!

The new St George's tower was built with a chequer flint and stone facing to match with buildings like the Old Mill - although its tiny slitted windows look like arrow slots from an even older era. But Butterfield made a new western front from red brick (!) You either love it or hate it...

From the church you could take Lower Road back towards Salisbury, but it's more interesting to go back to the Old Mill and walk along the river, as we did on the first walk.

On the church side of the Old Mill Hotel and opposite to it, there is a small gate that leads to a kind of park that runs by the side of the Nadder. There are no paths here, so you need to walk across the grass. Some of the river is tree-lined and your view east is blocked, but after about 250 metres, where the river bends, the trees are shorter and you can get what will be your last good view of the Cathedral until you cross Harnham Bridge and enter the Cathedral Close.

The park goes no further, so you need to walk away from the river through a childen's playground to get to Harnham Road, which you follow left.

There is not much of interest along this stretch: you are separated from the river by a line of large brick buildings that have mostly been converted into Hotels, B&Bs and Nursing Homes and you are next to the busy road that leads from Warminster to Bournemouth. Basically the only reason to walk here was to get back to the Cathedral. The only other alternative is to backtrack along Town Path, which is what some guides suggest.)

The only building to hold moderate interest is All Saints Church, which has a nice flint facing to the walls, athough its quite young by Salisbury standards, having been built as a parish church for east Harnham in 1854. (You can probably get a better shot by walking down the lane to the left.)

Services in All Saints and St George's are now conducted by a single vicar, who runs the single parish of Harnham: St George's and All Saints.

Our route gets more interesting again about 80m past the All Saints Church, when Harnham Road diverges left and slopes back towards the Avon. Amongst the Victorian and modern suburban buildings you'll find a strangely austere thatched terrace (with thatched porches) and the Rose and Crown Hotel - a 13th Century timber-framed coaching inn that would have been much more attractive if we'd shot it in the morning, when there was some light on it!

Facing a bit south of east the building was backlit when we saw it, so even though it was only late afternoon, the landlord had admitted defeat and switched on his flourescent lights!

(I did manage to brighten it up, with a lot of tweaking and slider pulling in camera raw software and image editors, but it was pretty dark and murky to start with...)

Harnham Road ends at a T-junction where it's crossed by St Nicholas's Road. Turn left here and you can cross two branches of the Avon (there's a small island between) over an attractive stone bridge. This is the Old Harnham or Ayleswade Bridge - the first bridge to be built in Salisbury (in 1244) and the one that revolutionised the city's economy. It's Grade I listed. The river is slower here and there are water level weeds stretching in the direction of the current.

At the far end of the bridge two hanging-tile-faced buildings glower at each other over the narrow road. The chicane formed by the two buildings may have been deliberate to make it easier to collect the tolls. The Toll House is on the right. It looks Georgian, but we haven't been able to find any more information about it, other than that it is Grade II listed, has a modern maisonnette inside and was on the market at the time for £245,000 ... cheaper than you would expect ... does it flood?

St. Nicolas' Road bends sharp right, back towards the highway, shortly after this. But we didn't follow it anyway, and turned left into De Vaux Place. It was somewhere on this corner that Bishop Giles Bridport's De Vaux College was located (mentioned earlier, but also sometimes called "College De Valle" or "De Valle Scholarium" to confuse the unwary.) It was dissolved in 1545, but we've not been able to find what happened to it subsequently.

The British Listed Buildings website shows that there is a Grade II listed property called De Vaux House at 6 St Nicholas' Street and that this forms a group with 8 St Nicholas' Street and 9 De Vaux Place, all of which are supposed to retain at least parts of the old college. But, on the ground, it's very unclear which these buildings are, since none of them seem particularly old or photogenic.

The south Gate is perhaps the least impressive of the Gates, but once you pass through it you're in Salisbury's Cathedral Close - the largest one in Britain, and one that has a wealth of ancient and history history attached to it. (There is a walk on the National Trust website that gives more detail about some of the buildings in the Close than you'll find here, if you're interested.)

From the south Gate there's a choice of two ways to walk. Keep to the right and head north for 200 metres and you will reach the entrance to the Cathedral cloisters. Keeping to the left and walking about 50m west will bring you to the west Walk, which will take you north to the King's House (in which you'll find Salisbury Museum.)

The southern part of the Cathedral Close, below a virtual line running from the Museum to St Ann's Gate, is the cinderella of Cathedral Close and few people visit it. Although there are many historical buildings here, most are not only private, but set behind walls on private land, so you can't even see the exteriors. We haven't seen these ourselves, but for the record, here's a quick round-up of those buildings, referenced by their (black) marker numbers on our map.