Part 1: Test Valley
Old Sarum Airfield If you fancy swapping your handlebars for a joystick for a while, Boscombe Down Aviation Collection has a varied display of aircraft cockpits as well as complete planes to look around. Having been the centre for RAF Army Co-Operation training, the old operations centre and map room are now the offices of Wessex Archaeology, so don’t be surprised if you see Phil from Time Team wandering about. the Roman settlement of Sorviodunum, with three major roads meeting at the east gate. As the town outside its walls grew, it became the site of a Romano/British temple and the continued importance of Salisbury meant it was home to a mint at the end of the Anglo-Saxon area.
Old Sarum You won’t find many places with more of a concentrated compilation of history than Old Sarum. Starting as a large multi-ring hill fort in the Iron Age (400 BC) it became
It was the obvious site for a Normal castle as soon as they invaded, and a cathedral was then built inside the ramparts with several expansions of both castle and cathedral in the next century. Things had got very cramped by the start of the 1200s though, and when the cathedral moved into town the importance of the castle declined too. It was empty and stripped for stone by 1500.
Salisbury While there is evidence of settlements in the Iron Age, Roman and Saxon periods, Salisbury as we know it is relatively recent. The grid pattern town was rapidly built around the relocated cathedral as Old Sarum was abandoned, and it became a city in 1227 and the largest in Wiltshire
by the 1300s. The Parliament of England met at New Sarum three times in the 1300s and a city wall was built from the cathedral and wall remains of Old Sarum in the same period. It’s been an important city for the region ever since.
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