Bishop Roger, St John Hope, and Old Sarum Cathedral

Abstract

Between 1909 and 1915, the former Iron Age hill fort at Old Sarum was excavated under the aegis of the Society of Antiquaries of London. These excavations were abandoned in 1915, and although the findings of individual seasons were published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, the principal interpreter of the archaeology, William St John Hope (1854–1919), died before the promised final report could be written. The absence of a final report complicates understanding of the constructional phases of the medieval castle and cathedral, while the lack of a detailed record of the find sites for the 11th- and 12th-century carved stonework hinders attempts to reconstruct the appearance of the cathedral. The following paper reviews the early-20th-century excavations and asks whether what was found is susceptible to alternative interpretation.

Keywords:

• Old Sarum
• Romanesque architecture
• medieval archaeology
• William St John Hope
• Roger of Sarum
• Salisbury Cathedral
• Society of Antiquaries

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank David Algar, Peter Saunders, Adrian Green and Megan Berrisford of the Salisbury Museum, Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros of the Society of Antiquaries, Katherine Davey and Ian Leins of English Heritage, and John Crook, Anna Eavis, Richard Gem, John Harper, Julian Luxford, Richard Plant, David Robinson and the two anonymous readers — all of whom have variously contributed insights, encouragement and practical help.

This paper is dedicated to Tim Tatton-Brown, who has been a model of generosity and has ever been unstinting in sharing his immense knowledge of Salisbury and Old Sarum.

Notes

1 For Wells, see W. Rodwell, Wells Cathedral: Excavations and Structural Studies, 1978–93, 2 vols (London 2001), I, 99–101, 104, 110–11. Bishop Giso (1061–88) is said to have provided Wells Cathedral with a cloister in the Historiola de Primordiis Episcopatus Somersetensis. See J. Hunter, Ecclesiastical Documents, I: A Brief History of the Bishoprick of Somerset to 1174 (London 1840), 4–5. Rodwell himself is unsure how to interpret structure 8 — two parallel walls 6 m apart which run north for at least 13 m from the Anglo-Saxon chapel of St Mary — and is sceptical of the assertion that it represents a walk from Giso’s cloister.

2 The literature on the architecture and archaeology of Old Sarum Cathedral is not extensive. The excavation reports are cited separately. Excepting these, the main studies are: A. Clapham, English Romanesque Architecture After the Conquest (Oxford 1934), 22–23; E. Crittal ed., VCH, Wiltshire Vol. 6 (London 1962), 51–68; R. Stalley, ‘A Twelfth-Century Patron of Architecture: A Study of the Buildings Erected by Roger, Bishop of Salisbury’, JBAA, 124 (1971), 62–83: M. F. Hearn, ‘The Rectangular Ambulatory in English Medieval Architecture’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 30 (1971), 187–208; RCHME, Ancient and Historical Monuments in the City of Salisbury Vol. 1 (London 1980), 1–24; R. Gem, ‘The First Romanesque Cathedral at Old Salisbury’, in Medieval Architecture and its Intellectual Context, ed. E. Fernie and P. Crossley (Hambledon 1990), 9–18; J. King, ‘The Old Sarum Master: A Twelfth-Century Sculptor in South-West England’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Magazine, 83 (1990), 70–95; E. Fernie, The Architecture of Norman England (Oxford 2000), 152–53, 172; J. McNeill, Old Sarum (London 2006), 17–19, 30–34; M. Thurlby, ‘Sarum Cathedral as rebuilt by Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, 1102–1139: the state of research and open questions’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Magazine, 101 (2008), 130–40; A. Brodie and D. Algar, ‘Architectural and Sculptured Stonework’, in Salisbury Museum Medieval Catalogue, Part 4, ed. P. Saunders (Salisbury 2012), 17–66; T. Tatton-Brown, ‘The Afterlife of St Osmund: From Bishop to Saint, and from Old to New Sarum’, History, 105 (2020), 626–35.

3 For the detailed account of the move written by William de Wanda, precentor (later dean) of Salisbury, see W. H. Rich-Jones ed., Register of St Osmund, 2 vols (Rolls Series, lxxviii, 1884), II, 3–44. For the poem written by Henry of Avranches c. 1225–26 commemorating the move, see C. Frost, ‘The Symbolic Move to New Sarum’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Magazine, 98 (2005), 155–64.

4 Editions and translations of the four surviving manuscripts containing the Sarum customary are available as part of an online project directed by John Harper, http://www.sarumcustomary.org.uk (accessed 3 March 2021). Richard Poore is usually credited with the codification of the two texts, the ordinal and customary, which jointly constitute the Use of Sarum while he was dean of Old Sarum (1197–1215). On the basis of Richard Poore’s meeting with the cathedral chapter to discuss the new constitution in January 1214, and the approval of that constitution in September 1214, Harper has argued that the ordinal and customary will have been compiled in preparation for the reinstitution of divine service at Old Sarum in November 1214, following the Interdict. See the page entitled ‘Use of Sarum: Origins’ on the ‘sarumcustomary.org.uk’ site. For the architectural memory of Old Sarum, see P. Kidson, ‘The Historical Circumstances and the Principles of the Design’, in Salisbury Cathedral: Perspectives on the Architectural History, ed. T. Cocke and P. Kidson (London 1993), 35–91, especially 72–75.

5 For catalogue entries on the material from Stratford-sub-Castle and Toone’s Court in Salisbury, see Brodie and Algar, ‘Architectural and Sculptured Stonework’, nos 24–25, 30, 35–36 (from Stratford-sub-Castle), nos 41–79 (from Toone’s Court, Salisbury), nos 81–85 (from the former Gibbs Mew brewery site, Salisbury). A lapidarium inventory of the material above the cathedral presbytery vault was compiled by Howard Jones in May 1998 and can be consulted in Salisbury Cathedral Library.

6 The ‘courtyard house’ is discussed below. The clearest reference to the reuse of materials from the cathedral precinct at Old Sarum in repairs to the castle occurs in 1237, when the sheriff was instructed to demolish the bishop’s hall and other buildings belonging to the bishopric, excepting the chapel, and carry the resulting timber and stone to the castle: Calendar of Liberate Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols (London 1916–64), I (1226–40), 283.

7 Had Pitt-Rivers been allowed to excavate in the 1890s, the focus would have been on the Iron Age earthworks. That he was not and the Antiquaries were, and that Hope’s initial assessment of what might be found at Old Sarum emphasized its medieval past, is a measure of the enormous change in the practice of archaeology, and in public opinion, that separates the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was crystallized in the 1882 and 1913 Ancient Monuments Acts.

8 C. H. Reed, ‘Anniversary Address’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, 21 (1909), 467–90. The address was given on 23 April 1909. For Old Sarum, see 474–75. For more general remarks on Government support for archaeology, and telling contrasts with continental practice, see 478–82.

9 I wish to record my gratitude to David Algar for acting as chaperone on various occasions when I transcribed sections of Hawley’s ‘field diary’, and Megan Berrisford for again facilitating access to the diaries following recent Covid-inspired closures.

10 See the remarks Hawley made in the field diary during the final weeks of the 1914 excavations, anticipating the difficulties in finding anything other than day labourers for the following year.

11 The slides are housed in cardboard boxes in a store adjacent to Upper Mezzanine Room 2 at the Society of Antiquaries. I wish to record my thanks to Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros, head of library and museum collections at the Society of Antiquaries, for making it possible for me to inspect all the Old Sarum excavation slides at Burlington House when the library reopened in April 2021.

12 See, for example, the watercolour of Old Sarum painted in 1829 by J. M. W. Turner and now in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.

13 W. St J. Hope, ‘Report of the Committee for Excavations at Old Sarum’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, 22 (1910), 190–201, at 195.

14 The spoil heap from the castle — as subsequently relaid — now forms the platform on which the car park sits. Many photographs of the early stages of the clearance and laying of the tramway survive, as they were turned into postcards and sold to visitors at the gate.

15 Hope, ‘Report’ (1910), 195–201.

16 W. St J. Hope, ‘Report of the Committee for Excavations at Old Sarum’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, 23 (1911), 501–19, at 502.

17 Ibid., 504.

18 Ibid., 504–05.

19 RCHME, Salisbury, I, 3. The 1366 contract is given in full in the appendix on 173–74.

20 Calendar of Liberate Rolls, III (1245–51), 65. The Latin is ‘claustrum etiam inter aulam et magnam cameram ibidem de novo refeci’.

21 On Sherborne see, most recently, P. White, Sherborne Old Castle, Dorset: Archaeological Investigations 1930–90 (London 2015), 52, 94–113.

22 A. Clapham, ‘Old Sarum Castle’, Archaeol. J., 104 (1947), 139–40; RCHME, Salisbury, I, 8–10.

23 The best recent attempt was made by Peter Dunn for English Heritage and was used in both the English Heritage Old Sarum guidebook and J. Ashbee, ‘Cloisters in English Palaces in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, JBAA, 159 (2006), 71–90, at 76, fig. 3.

24 Hawley described the recess in which carved stone from the castle was assembled as ‘the sentry box’. Despite the absence of a final report, the photograph is de facto identification of stone retrieved from the castle and not the cathedral.

25 Hope, ‘Report’ (1911), 509.

26 W. Hawley, ‘Report of the Excavations undertaken at Old Sarum in 1911’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, 24 (1912), 52–65, at 52.

27 Ibid., 56–57.

28 Ibid., 54.

29 Ibid., 59–60.

30 Ibid., 61–63; RCHME, Salisbury, I, 3.

31 A total of £177 was spent on the king’s buildings in the castle between 1176 and 1179: R. Allen Brown, H. Colvin and A. J. Taylor ed., The History of the King’s Works: The Middle Ages, 2 vols (London 1963), II, 826. The Limousin chronicler, Geoffrey de Vigeois, states that Eleanor of Aquitaine was kept in captivity at Old Sarum after she was implicated in the 1173 uprising against her husband, so it seems likely some of this expenditure was used on repairs to the courtyard house. M. Bouquet, ed., Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, XII (Paris 1869), 443. The courtyard house is the only building suitable to supporting the queen’s household in the castle at Old Sarum — even one in reduced circumstances.

32 R. Benson and H. Hatcher, The History of Modern Wiltshire: Old and New Sarum or Salisbury (London 1843), plate opposite 49. Hatcher drew up the plan in September 1834. I am grateful to Tim Tatton-Brown for sending me a scan of Hatcher’s plan.

33 Entry for 13 May 1912 in Hawley’s Field Diary.

34 W. Hawley, ‘Report on the Excavations undertaken at Old Sarum in 1912’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, 25 (1913), 93–104.

35 Ibid., 94.

36 Ibid., 96.

37 Ibid., 97.

38 Ibid., 95–96.

39 Ibid., 94–95.

40 Ibid., 97–98.

41 All three are now in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, where they are listed in the catalogue as numbers 7, 8 and 16. See Brodie and Algar, ‘Architectural and Sculptured Stonework’, 32–34.

42 W. St J. Hope, ‘Report on the Excavation of the Cathedral Church of Old Sarum in 1913’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, 26 (1914), 100–19, at 115.

43 Ibid., 115.

44 Ibid., 101.

45 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. N. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (London 1998–99), I, Bk IV, 325.

46 Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 102. For an alternative translation, see William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum (as above), I, Bk IV, 408. This includes the celebrated passage, ‘As a bishop he […] never spared expense provided he could accomplish what he had in mind to do, especially his buildings. This can be seen above all at Salisbury and Malmesbury; for there he erected buildings large in scale, expensive, and very beautiful to look at, the courses of stone being laid so exactly that the joints defy inspection and give the whole wall the appearance of a single rock face’.

47 Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 103.

48 Ibid., 104.

49 Ibid., 104–05.

50 Hawley, ‘Report’ (1913), 97 and Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 105–06.

51 Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 105.

52 For the proposal that the upper storey of the building immediately north of the north transept acted as a chapter-house, see ibid., 105.

53 Ibid., 105–8.

54 Hawley, Field diary, June 1913; Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 107.

55 Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 106.

56 Ibid., 108–09.

57 Ibid., 107.

58 Ibid., 107–08.

59 RCHME, Salisbury, I, 18–19. Despite there being no evidence for stairs, the Royal Commission envisaged an early arrangement in which a raised platform filled the central chapel, reached by two open stairs from the ambulatory. To either side of the stairs were passages which led to an ambulatory and crypt chamber. Then, in an alteration dated to c. 1179, the upper platform and crypt were abandoned and a more conventional chapel was established, embellished with the marble pavement and accessed from the ambulatory via a single step. There is almost no point of contact between the proposal for phase 1 and what was uncovered at Old Sarum.

60 Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 104, 108, 111–16.

61 Fragments of floor tiles were also found ‘scattered in or about the eastern part of the church’, which are more difficult to explain given that the evidence suggests stone paving was used across the whole of the eastern parts of the church. Hope suggests tiles may have been used for the high altar platform.

62 Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 108 (groined vaults), 116 (rib vaults and keystone).

63 Ibid., 115.

64 W. Hawley, ‘Report on the Excavations at Old Sarum in 1914’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, 27 (1915), 230–39.

65 Ibid., 231.

66 Ibid., 232.

67 On the plaster floor, see ibid., 233–34.

68 Ibid., 236. John Blair asked whether in its early phases the ‘house by Old Sarum Cathedral’ might have been built for the canons: J. Blair, ‘Hall and Chamber: English Domestic Planning 1000–1250’, in Manorial Domestic Buildings in England and Northern France, ed. G. Meirion-Jones and M. Jones (London 1993), 1–21, at 13, fig. 6 and n. 44.

69 Hawley, ‘Report’ (1915), 238. Peers was Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries from 1908 to 1921.

70 Ibid., 238.

71 See Calendar of Liberate Rolls, I (1226–40), 281: ‘To the sheriff of Wilts. Computabitur — to cause the timber of the hall that belonged to the bishopric of Salisbury within the bailey of Salisbury castle and of the other houses there, the posts (postes) and pans (pannas) and laths (lathas) and shingles (scindulas) of the hall and of the other houses there, and also the stone of the hall and of the other houses, to be taken down without delay, as much as shall be necessary for the repair of the king’s houses of the castle (concerning the repair of which the king has sent his letters to the sheriff), and to cause the timber, laths, shingles, posts, pans and stone to be carried to the castle, saving there the chapel that belonged to the bishop of Salisbury within the enclosure of his houses there, and to cause the remainder of the stone and walls of the said hall and other houses to be kept safely for other works of the castle until the king shall otherwise order. The cost of pulling down the said timber, laths and shingles, posts and pans and the timber and carriage thereof shall be allowed to him by the view and testimony of lawful men’. Pannas are generally understood to refer to wall-plates. See L. F. Salzman, Building in England down to 1540 (Oxford 1952), 203–04.

72 W. St J. Hope, ‘Report on excavation on the site of Old Sarum in 1915’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, 28 (1916), 174–83.

73 Ibid., 180.

74 Ibid., 183.

75 P. Rahtz and J. Musty, ‘Excavations at Old Sarum 1957’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Magazine, 57 (1960), 352–70; Archaeological Prospection Services of Southampton, ‘Report on the Geophysical Survey at Old Sarum, Wiltshire, March–April 2014’ (unpublished report). A summary of this last is available in Strutt, Barker and Ingram, ‘The Old Sarum Landscapes Project: Geophysical Survey of a medieval city and its environs’, International Society for Archaeological Prospection Newsletter, 50 (2017), 10–16.

76 The series opened with F. Bligh Bond, ‘Glastonbury Abbey: Report on the discoveries made during the excavations of 1908’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, 54 (1908), 107–30, and continued through another four sets of Proceedings to volume 58 (1912).

77 Time Team was a British TV series which organized rapid excavations of potentially revealing historical sites and in which the excavation team was interviewed at regular intervals to report on a particular day’s progress. The series was broadcast on Channel 4 from 1994 to 2014.

78 William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. E. King and K. Potter (Oxford 1998), 39.

79 K. Potter and R. Davis ed, Gesta Stephani (Oxford 1976), 65. The Latin is ‘ad ecclesiam cooperiendam’.

80 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, II, xvii–xviii.

81 Ibid., 738.

82 Hope maintains the central chapel was 14 ft 9 in. wide, but that between it and each of the flanking chapels there was an interval of nearly 15 ft: ‘This interval has on either side fragmentary masses of rubble walling. Next the outer chapels these clearly belonged to walls six feet thick, in line with the side walls of the presbytery. The fragments next the middle chapel were certainly 5½ feet thick, so that the interval between the walls was about 3 feet. The only feasible suggestion as to the use of these narrow areas is that they either formed passages to vices at their eastern ends, or themselves contained ascending flights of steps to the upper works’. Hope, Report (1914), 107–08.

83 For convenient summaries and bibliography, see C. Sapin, Les cryptes en France (Paris 2014), 84–89. A later successor is the three-aisled square-ended outer crypt constructed at St Bartholomew, Liège. Ibid., 138–39.

84 The position of the graves is marked on the plan published in the Royal Commission volume. RCHME, Salisbury, I, plan opposite 15. Hope dealt with these graves in Hope, Report (1914), 112. Photographs of graves 1, 2 and 3 in situ are contained in Montgomerie’s photographic album at the Salisbury Museum.

85 The clearest parallel for Hope’s proposal is the corona at Canterbury Cathedral — notwithstanding the differences in shape and volume.

86 W. St J. Hope, ‘The Sarum Customary and its relation to the Cathedral Church of Old Sarum’, Archaeologia, 68 (1917), 111–26.

87 Hope ‘Report’ (1914), 116. Hawley’s field diary maintains fragments of porphyry were found in the south and west walks of the cloister. As large quantities of dust and building debris were also found there, it is highly likely that the south cloister walk was one of the areas in which materials from the demolition of the cathedral were cleaned and sorted. This could be the reason that the find site for the porphyry was outside the cathedral church.

88 T. Tatton-Brown, ‘Purple and green porphyry at Old Sarum cathedral’, The Hatcher Review, 5 (1998), 33–38; idem, ‘Porphyry’, in P. Saunders ed., Salisbury Museum Medieval Catalogue, Part 4 (Salisbury 2012), 212–17.

89 No evidence was found for the pavement in the area around the high altar. It is possible this might also have been a marble pavement.

90 The porphyry and verde antico fragments recovered in the excavation had been planed and smoothed on both the upper and lower horizontal surfaces.

91 Tatton-Brown, ‘The Afterlife of St Osmund’. For miracles associated with Osmund, see A. R. Malden, The Canonisation of St Osmund (Salisbury 1901), 35–36. The first recorded miracle was said to have occurred while Henry de Beaumont was dean (1155–65).

92 Christopher Norton sees no problem with a date during Roger’s episcopacy for the pavement, pointing to the likelihood that Anselm’s glorious choir at Canterbury boasted an opus sectile floor, elements from which were probably reused in the pavement laid to the west of the shrine of Thomas Becket. He also points to a parallel for the intersecting circles in the early-12th-century tessellated pavement at Sorde-l’abbaye (Landes): C. Norton, ‘The luxury pavement in England before Westminster’, in Westminster Abbey: The Cosmati Pavements, ed. L. Grant and R. Mortimer (Aldershot 2002), 9–16.

93 For the Canterbury Miracle windows, see M. Caviness, The Windows of Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury (London 1981), 157–214, colour plates XII–XIV, and plates 129–32, 135–36, 139–40. There is discussion of the likely date of the windows on 163–64.

94 Tatton-Brown, ‘The Afterlife of St Osmund’, fig. 3. See ‘detail A’.

95 Register of St Osmund, II, 55.

96 Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 103–04; Hawley, ‘Report’ (1915), 236.

97 See Society of Antiquaries slides 1507 and 1509 for views of these structures under excavation.

98 For a section identifying the pre-Conquest ground level of the area on which the cloister was built, see Hawley, ‘Report’ (1915), section facing page 236. What was to become the south walk of the cloister had probably already been dug down to construct the north foundation walls of the presbytery.

99 Hope, ‘Report’ (1916), 180.

100 The surprise is that cloisters and monastic precincts had become one of the principal concerns of English medieval archaeology in the decade running up to the excavation of Old Sarum. Hope himself had collaborated both with Harold Brakspear and John Bilson in their investigation. See W. St John Hope and H. Brakspear, ‘The Cluniac Priory of St Pancras at Lewes’, Collections of the Sussex Archaeological Society, 49 (1906), 66–88; W. St John Hope and H. Brakspear, ‘The Cistercian Abbey of Beaulieu in the County of Southampton, Archaeol. J., 63 (1906), 129–86; W. St John Hope and J. Bilson, Architectural Description of Kirkstall Abbey (Leeds 1907).

101 G. Boto and M. Sureda, ‘Les cathédrales romanes catalanes, programmes, liturgie, architecture’, Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa, 44 (2013), 75–89.

102 D. Greenway, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, IV, Salisbury (London 1991), xliii; eadem, ‘1091, St Osmund and the Constitution of the Cathedral’, in Salisbury Cathedral: Medieval Art and Architecture, ed., L. Keen and T. Cocke, BAA Trans., xvii (Leeds 1996), 1–9.

103 Greenway, ‘1091, St Osmund and the Constitution’, 6.

104 The Old Register is now kept at the Wiltshire and Swindon Archive, D 1/1/1. The most convenient critical edition is published online at http://www.sarumcustomary.org.uk/exploring/downloads.php (accessed 4 May 2021). The Palm Sunday procession is listed at 70.2, pp. 69–70. ‘Et sic eat processio precentore incipiente antiphonam et exellentiore sacerdote exequente officium processionis vexillis precedentibus, in primis circa claustrum, et ita exeant per totam (recte portam) cimiterii canonicorum usque ad locum prime stationis, que fit in extrema parte orientali cimiterii laicorum, ubi in primis legitur evangelium ab ipso diacono induto ad processionem.’

105 Hawley, ‘Report’ (1915), 232–36.

106 Ibid., 238.

107 Blair, ‘Hall and Chamber’, 11–13 and fig. 6. Blair suggests that in the first phase, the range(s) might have been built for the cathedral canons. See 18, n. 44.

108 Ibid., 13.

109 J. Montague, ‘The Cloister and Bishop’s Palace at Old Sarum with Some Thoughts on the Origins and Meaning of Secular Cathedral Cloisters’, JBAA, 159 (2006), 48–70, at 56–57, fig. 7.

110 Ibid., 57–64.

111 Hope, ‘Report’ (1916), 176–84.

112 Ibid., 180.

113 Hawley, ‘Report’ (1915), 233–36.

114 Ibid., 233.

115 Hawley, 1914 Diary, entry for 18 August.

116 Ibid., entry for 21 August.

117 Ibid., entry for 25 July.

118 Ibid., 21 August. The ‘Cubby’ was a single-storey timber structure used as a site hut and store-room by the eastern entry to the bridge from the outer bailey into the castle.

119 The radius of the voussoirs shown beneath the basket is too small for them to have formed part of the hall arcade. The voussoirs shown obliquely to the right are better candidates, though the ‘ornamental hood mould’ is a less obvious identifier than the chevron moulding and one would have expected Hawley to have mentioned the chevron. Nonetheless, they are the only voussoirs with a consistent design to survive in quantity.

120 See discussion in Blair, ‘Hall and Chamber’, 10–14.

121 P. Rahtz, The Saxon and Medieval Palaces at Cheddar (Oxford 1979). The infirmary built at St Albans by Abbot Geoffrey de Gorron (1119–46) was described as an ‘aula cum capella versus orientem’ and is likely to have been similar in general design to the infirmary halls at Canterbury or Ely: Thomas of Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 3 vols (Rolls Series, xxviii, 1867–69), I, 76. The earliest example of a parish church built as an aisled hall without structural division is probably St Peter, Northampton. This is undated, though the sculpture suggests a date no later than 1150. The CRSBI offer a date in the 1140s. See R. Baxter, ‘Northampton St Peter’, in The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=13446 (accessed 14 May 2021).

122 Although described as justiciar by later historians, there is some doubt the office existed before the reign of Henry II. Roger was certainly Henry I’s chief minister, following the death of William Adelin in 1120, and was appointed regent for Henry’s absence in Normandy between 1123 and 1126: B. Kemp, ‘Roger of Salisbury’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 2004), online edition http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/23956 (accessed 11 December 2021).

123 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, II, 738.

124 Hope, ‘Report’ (1914), 115.

125 See below for comments on the close wall. One would have expected stone intended for reuse to have been cleaned and redressed at Old Sarum to save on transport costs. However, some, at least, of the freshly quarried stone used in building the new cathedral was shaped at Salisbury, so it is possible that the construction methods established by the cathedral workforce favoured centralizing the preparation of building stone and that recycled stone may also have been trimmed there. Francis Price found quantities of stone chippings around Salisbury Cathedral whenever graves were dug, while Roy Spring reported finding limestone debris to a depth of 5 feet along the north and west sides of the cathedral: F. Price, A Series of Particular and Useful Observations, made with great Diligence and Care, upon that Admirable Structure, the Cathedral-Church of Salisbury (London 1753), 20–21; R. Spring, ‘The Clerk of Works Report’, Spire, 44 (1974), 20; P. Blum, ‘The Sequence of the Building Campaigns at Salisbury Cathedral’, Art Bulletin, 73 (1991), 6–38, at 18.

126 T. D. Hardy ed., Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi, 2 vols (London 1833–44), II, 91, col. 2. The entry is highly abbreviated. ‘MAND est H. de Novitt qd hre faciat Magro Elie de Dereha xiij quere longas et rectas i puo peo dni R de Odiha de duno dni R ad vernas faciendas ad opacem ecclie Sar.’

127 Register of St. Osmund, II, 55.

128 See note 71.

129 For a historical summary of the dating evidence for the Salisbury nave, see S. Brown, Sumptuous and Richly Adorn’d (London 1999), 26–27. The south walk of the cloister cannot have been built before the 1263 grant of the strip of land on which it was built: B. Kemp and T. Tatton-Brown, ‘The Date of the Cloister of Salisbury Cathedral’, JBAA, 161 (2008), 94–103.

130 ‘Omnes muros lapideos quondam cathedralis ecclesie veteris Sar. ac domorum que dudum fuerunt tunc episcopi et canonicorum eiusdem ecclesie infra castrum nostrum de veteri Sar. habend de dono nostro in emendacionem ecclesie sue Nove Sar. et clausure precinctus eiusdem ecclesie. Ita quod prefati episcopus, decanus et capitulum lapides et cementum de muris predictis extrahere, et ea quo voluerint cariare et ducere possent’: Letter Patent of Edward I, dated 16 December 1276. R. L. Poole ed., ‘The Muniments of the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury’, Reports on Manuscripts in Various Collections (London 1901), I, 362.

131 For the 1327 grant, see Calendar of the patent rolls preserved in the Public record office (London, 1891–), I (1327–30), 159. For the close wall, see T. Tatton-Brown, ‘Salisbury Cathedral — the Close Wall’, Sarum Chronicle, 19 (2019), 103–15.

132 As it happens the cemetery wall had been constructed with stone recycled from Old Sarum. For the 14th-century licences, see Tatton-Brown, ‘Close Wall’, 105 and 113.

133 Ibid., 105–11.

134 The grant was issued at Croydon on 1 March 1331. This records the gift to Robert (Wyville), bishop of Salisbury and to the dean and chapter at Salisbury of ‘all the stone walls of the former cathedral church of Old Sarum and of the houses that were those of the bishop and canons of the same church within our castle of Old Sarum for the repair of their church of New Sarum and the enclosure of the precinct of the same church’: Calendar of Patent Rolls: Edward III, 1330–34 (London 1893), 82.

135 Ibid., 234. ‘Licence for the dean and chapter of the church of St. Mary, Salisbury, on their petition shewing that they are bound to find a chantry in the old cathedral church within the king’s castle of Old Sarum, the stones of which church have lately been given by the king’s letters patent to R[obert Wyville], bishop of Salisbury, and the chapter to be taken down and used for repair of their church at Salisbury, to build a chapel in any other suitable place within the castle to serve such chantry in’.

136 Tatton-Brown, ‘Close Wall’, 105–10.

137 RCHME, Salisbury, I, 142–43.

138 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner and R. H. Brodie, 21 vols (London 1862–1910), I, no. 5715. The entry is dated 26 December 1514.

139 The courtyard house was the source of the only carved stonework from the castle excavations Hope thought worthy of mention. Most of that visible in Fig. 8 is stylistically consistent — an exception being the block of finely moulded point-to-point chevron visible in the centre of the image. This probably dates from the second half of the 12th century, and may have originated in alterations to the courtyard house that coincided with unspecified work on the castle in 1176–79.

140 Brodie and Algar, ‘Architectural and Sculptured Stonework’, nos 24–25, 30, 35–36.

141 The corollary is that if stone has been recycled from the bishop’s palace, trapezoidal court or adjacent canonries, it came indirectly via the castle and should not, therefore, be among stone reused in and around Salisbury Cathedral.

142 Frost, ‘The Symbolic Move to New Sarum’, 160.