Cathedral Close in Salisbury

This is the Cathedral Close surrounding the Salisbury Cathedral.

A 'cathedral close' is an architectural term referring to the series of buildings that serve as appendates to a cathedral. These may include diocesan offices, school, free-standing chapels, and the houses of the bishop and other clergy.

This particular close contains 'a great array of English Architecture, some designed by Sir Christopher Wren, dating from the 13th to 20th century.' Read more here.

That plaque reads:

An Important timely point of interest to the passer-by...

In the year of our Lord 1752, the Reformation of the Calender took place - see the Wall Dial above dated 1749. This Julian Calender made the year too short, thus the accumulated error amounted to eleven days. England adopted the Gregorian or Reformed Calender, so the next day after September 2 1752 became September 14 1752

Pretty neat huh? Would suck if they skipped your birthday...

We visited one of the homes in the close called the Mompesson House. It is an 18th century house that offers find Georgian features, intricate plasterwork and a finely carved oak staircase. (No pictures inside, though - this is of the garden).

It was the film location for the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility.







The whole close was packed full of ancient, manicured homes. Beautiful flowers and gardens - makes me want to live there.

Alright kids, there's more Salisbury to come!

Salisbury Cathedral

Alright now we're onto the cathedral. It was a lovely cathedral in Salisbury, and since it wasn't all snug up to all sorts of other buildings, you really got a good idea of how freaking huge it was!

Here's some background information for you:

Salisbury Cathedral was located just outside our B&B, and is considered to be one of the leading examples of Early English architecture. While most cathedrals take decades if not centuries to complete, Salisbury Cathedral took only 38 years, making its design very cohesive.

As a response to deteriorating relations between the clergy and the miliary at Old Sarum (which you'll see in a bit), the decision was made to resite the cathedral and was moved to its present place in Salisbury. Legend has it that the Bishop of Old Sarum shot an arrow in the direction he would build the cathedral - the arrow hit a deer and the deer finally died in the place where Salisbury Cathedral is now.

The foundation stone was laid on 28 April 1220 and due to the high water table in the new location, the cathedral was built on only four feet of foundations, and by 1248 the nave, transepts and choir were complete. The west font was ready by 1265 and the cloisters and chapter house were completed around 1280.

There is just a huge amount of detail crammed into every possible corner.

This gargoyle man was easily the most impressive. And that little bugger chomping on his face doesn't help. Ouch!
Inside it was super impressive. Crazy tall and spacious - pretty empty, too.


This water feature was tons of fun to photograph - reflections and everything. I only wished I had a tripod.

Salisbury Cathedral has the tallest church spire in the UK at 123 metres. The cathedral also has the largest cloister and the largest cathedral close in Britain, comprimising 80 acres.

The cathedral also contains the world's oldest working clock from AD 1386, and has one of the four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta. (I didn't take pictures of the former, and wasn't allowed to take pictures of the latter).



We did end up walking through the cathedral grounds again one evening as the sky darkened. I tried to take some nighttime pictures, but as I didn't bring a tripod I was stuck putting the camera on anything flat - rocks, benches, etc. So it was hard to get a good composition.

It's a beautiful cathedral though, and a great way to kick off church-seeing for the rest of the trip.

Salisbury!

I've broken Salisbury up into 4 seperate blog posts: Salisbury Cathedral, Church of St. Thomas Beckett, Cathedral Close and all the rest. Welcome to All of the Rest!

In the meantime, here are some fun facts about Salisbury:

salisbury can also be called New Sarum to distringuish it from the original site of settlement to the nort of the city at Old Sarum.

While the current city was not established until 1220, there has been a settlement in the area since prehistory.

Here's a lovely old gate.
And a close-up of the dude on the gate. Looks like he should be a king or something, but there's no sign.
This is the 15th century poultry cross in Salisbury. There has been a regular market in Salisbury since 1227. In the 15th century the Market Place was dotted with stone crosses marking the centres for certain trads and goods - today only the poultry cross remains, to which flying buttresses were added in 1852.

Salisbury has lots of lovely old buildings - you can tell that they are old since they hang over themselves - each additional floor sticks out onto the street a bit more than the last.

Where to go, where to go...
This is the tower of one of the smaller, less interessting churches in Salisbury. I think we went into this one, but there was just an antiques market in the basement.
The river that flows under the Old Mill.
Another church spire poking out above some of the other buildings on the mill grounds.
This is the Fisherton Street Clock Tower. That's all I know. Wikipedia is useless for this one, so it can't be that old.
Walking down the canal over to the meadow!
The meadow!!
Here come the baby ducks! (We had thrown some crumbled scone on the ground... that's what tempted them)
But they sure were cute.
The swans soon showed up and bumped the baby ducks out of the way in search of scone.
I like this photo because to me, it looks like they are making a heart shape.
We snapped a photo of thise house one afternoon, mainly because it looks so old.
And, to top it off, after one particularly miserable downpour of rain while we were trying to both walk home and eat ice cream, we were greeted by a very bright rainbow!

Keep tuned for more Salisbury!

Vacation!

Alright kids get ready for some intense vacation pictures! I'll give you a quick re-cap of what we did on our vacation and then we're on to the pictures!

Okay, so everyone flew in on 25th April. We spent the weekend in London (all the pictures I took in London I will clump together at the end). Monday morning we hit the trains to Salisbury. We spent 3 nights in Salisbury - touring the city and taking one day trip out to see Stonehenge, Old Sarum and Amesbury. Thursday the 30th we hopped a train to Bath, where we spent 2 nights.

While in Bath we toured the city again, saw the Roman Baths and the abbey. We also took another day trip out and saw Stonehenge (again!), Avebury Stone Circle, Castle Combe and Lacock.

We were back in London on Saturday the 2nd, which is where we stayed until the 11th. We took one day trip out to see a city called St. Albans, but other than that stayed in the city.

On the 11th of May my Aunt flew home and my mom and I flew to Edinburgh, where we spent the next 4 nights. We flew back into London on the Friday, and we spent the rest of the time in London. My mom flew home on the 20th.

Okay, get ready!