Gone Medieval - Old Sarum: Stronghold of Norman England

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Old Sarum was the earliest settlement of Salisbury in Wlitshire. While there are indications of a prehistoric settlement on the site from as early as 3000 BC, its importance in Norman England has slipped from prominence.Matt Lewis talks to archaeologist and TV presenter Alex Langlands, whose recent book - Tales of Two Cities: Settlement and Suburb in Old Sarum and Salisbury -offers fresh insights into the significance of this ancient site.Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. It was edited by Max Carrey, the producers are Joseph Knight and Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘MEDIEVAL’ You can take part in our listener survey here > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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really were with Gone Medieval. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. What do you know about Old Serum? Maybe something, maybe nothing. Maybe you've been there. Well, today's guest has some fascinating insights on a critical site in Norman England that slipped from prominence. Alex Langlands is an archaeologist, Associate Professor at Swansea University in History and Heritage, and you may recognise him from the BBC series of shows that include the Victorian Farm and the Edwardian Farm, which my wife absolutely loves.

Alex's new book, Tale of Two Cities, Settlement and Suburb, co-edited with Hadrian Cook, is a fresh look at the importance of old sarum. So welcome to gone medieval, Alex. Thanks so much for having me, Matt. It's great to have you here. As I say, my wife is a massive, fan of those Edwardian farm, Victorian farm programs, and I've been badgering you for maybe over a

year now to come and do this episode. So I'm glad the book has landed and you're able to come and talk to us. Thanks for having me on. It's a good time to be talking about really what has been, for me, about 10 years of work on and off, looking at that monument and trying to rethink it really. Yeah, and I've been badgering you because Old Serum is such an important, an impressive site that often doesn't get as much airtime as it probably deserves. So as an introduction for us, can you just tell us a little bit about what old serum is? What's the earliest evidence we have for it being used? The sort of earliest substantial evidence is that it's an R&H Hill Fort. And there's been some spot finds around the monument that suggest iron age activity there.

And of course, we all know Wessex. It's peppered with Iron Age Hill forts. And almost certainly, there was one there. It's been heavily reconfigured by the Normans, which will come on to. But one of the kind of biggest indicators that it was quite a prominent place in the first century is the fact that no less than three Roman roads can verge on the East Gate. So the Romans have really identified this place as somewhere where they're going to punch in three roads and just make sure that it's a central node in their network of towns and roads in the south of England. There's an Iron Age presence there. How much then do we know about Old Sarum during the Anglo-Saxon and the Viking period? So we're in Wessex, so we're around where Alfred the Great is famously going to be drawing battle lines with the Vikings. How important is Old Serum saying in comparison to Winchester?

It doesn't compare. It's a really tricky one because what evidence we have for Old Serum in the early medieval period, we've got a couple of references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The early sort of sixth century one is proto-historic, borderline fictional and past mythological. call. It may be a grain of truth in a battle of being fought there in the 6th century. Fast forward, and we come into the early 11th century, so we're in the second Viking age, and we learn of the Vikings ransacking Wilton, which was the county town or the Shire town. It gave its name to Wiltshire. That's quite a busy place. We know that, Wilton.

And then the Vikings having sacked Wilton, they make their way to Old Sarum, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us, and then it says, rather frustratingly, they go to the We don't know whether they get to old ceremony and think, ye gods, that's a little bit too much to take on, or they get to old ceremony, there's nothing there, and they just go somewhere else. I suspect it's the former because there is a mint there in the early 11th century, and I think it is emerging as a prominent location in the late Anglo-Saxon period. The late Anglo-Saxons, a bit like the Normans have this sort of imperial ambitions. They want to be the kind of inheritors of Rome, and they're picking more. monumental sites in the landscape to use for their town building and urban projects. A central question for us was always the extent to which Old Serum was a kind of brand spanking

new Greenfield site for the Normans to play out their ambitions there, or whether Old Serum was already experiencing a sort of meteoric rise in the earlier 11th century under Athelred and perhaps even earlier in the 10th century under King Edgar. the Edgill peaceable, very powerful Anglo-Saxon keep. Yeah, so there's a sense that there is a long history at Old Serum, but that as we get towards the 10th and 11th centuries, it's beginning to rise in prominence maybe quite quickly. Yeah, because if we look across Wessex,

you're really early Anglo-Saxon settlements, they're all right down by the rivers, river crossings, on the alluvial plain. Think Wilton, for example. Think places like Wynbourne Minster, be another classic example. And to a certain extent, Winchester, is right down on the river Itchy. It's the absolutely perfect place. That's where the Anglo-Saxons want to be.

But by the time you get to the 10th, into the 11th century, as I say, there's this sort of grandeur, this need for kind of visibility and monumentalism in the landscape. And we see places like South Cadbury, for example, is re-fortified in the 11th century, probably under King Aethel Red. I think the same thing is going on at Old Serum. Wilton just doesn't work. It's boxed in by the rivers. It's small.

It's not easy to defend. They want a bigger site to play out those kind of ambitions of power. So I think old serum, something is happening at Old Serum in the late Anglo-Saxon period. And then if we look at Doomsday Brook, we've got quite an interesting reference there. Doomsday Brook doesn't tell us it's a borough, so an urban centre. But it does tell us that the third penny is being paid as a tax at Sierrabury, so at Salisbury. basically a serum. And the third penny is an indicator elsewhere across Wessex and England that there are some kind of urban functions there. Like I say, it's got a mint as well. So there's something

going on there. But as yet, to be fair, archaeologically, we haven't really managed to pin it down. It sounds like potentially to some extent in the late Anglo-Saxon period, those kings as they take control of the whole of England are perhaps trying to co-op to that Roman focus on old Sarah. I mean, if the Romans have pointed lots of roads there, it must be an important site. And if we want to associate ourselves with Rome, perhaps we can associate ourselves with a site that Rome thought was important. I think you're absolutely bang on. I think if you look at kings like King Atlstan, for example, he's a very European-minded king. What we see increasingly in the late Anglo-Saxon period is these kind of delusions of grandeur, but there's some

sense of Romanitas and bringing about a very Christian form of Romanitas. Are there work I've done in Wessex, I wrote a book called The Ancient Ways of Wessex, travel and communication in an early medieval landscape back in 2019. And one of the things I identified is that it looks like some of the Roman roads are being reinstated in the 10th century. And particularly that road that goes from Andover down to Old Serum, which is called the Portway, that sits right next to Great Lee, which is where one of Atholstan's most famous codes, law codes, is written. And I think something is going on there, exactly what you're saying, as the West Saxon kings are realizing that actually they're bigger players, there's Britwaters, if you like, they're the

lords of all of Britain. They've got this idea that they are the new emperors, if you like. And it's about having that kind of extra tier in the landscape. So I think you're absolutely spot on. They would see that there were Roman roads converging on this place. I suspect that they reuse some of the Roman material there for some of their structures because there is some suggestion of archaeological evidence on the side. But yeah, this is all about kind of new Rome. One of my favourite things about Atholstan is the one time that he calls himself Emperor of the entire world of Britain.

He clearly does have those pretensions to be an imperial figure. Yeah, exactly. And imperial figures need big, impressive cities and structures. For me, I associate Old Serum most with the Norman King. So on the eve of the Norman conquest, there is a sense then that Old Serum is becoming important. Is this maybe why it will attract William the Conqueror when he becomes king? Because he does seem to focus a lot of attention on Old Serum. Yes. So there's something already happening there, even if it's elusive to us archaeologically

and the historical sources are a little bit vague. But I think you're absolutely right. Now, the big question for me is, do the Normans already have that place in mind quite early on, perhaps even pre-conquest when they're warming up? Or do these ideas around using old Sarum emerge in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings? And there are some critical questions there about the extent to which elements of the conquest are being plowned beyond just getting over there and getting King Harold. The only reason I would suggest that there may be a sense that they are thinking long term and they are thinking about old term in advance is because Edward of Salisbury goes on to become the sheriff of Wiltshire and his base is Old Serum. And Edward of Sulbsbury is of mixed Anglo-Saxon and Norman heritage.

Of all of the English lords that retain their lands and it's about 5% it's a pretty much of wipe out of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, but of those that do retain their lands, Edward is cheap amongst them. So I do wonder in his career whether what we're seeing there is an agent of the Norman project and perhaps some of these plans being laid in advance. But it's speculation. But I think when we come to think about the broader projects of conquest, we might want to be thinking about what was planned after. They must have had some kind of plan strategy after 1066. It's not a case of we just play the next game, focus on the next game and then see what happens. I think they probably would have been thinking if we do ready to knock

the king pin out, what do we do? London, Winchester, but then how do we suppress the southwest? They're probably not walking off the field at Hastings scratching their heads and going, what do we do now? They must have had something in mind. Yeah, exactly. And so when William the Conqueror then, he becomes King of England, he arrives at Old Sarum and looks at it. He does a lot there. One of things that we've spoken about before about Old Serum is the mot and the position of the mot within the arrangement of the castle. Do we know whether William builds that mot or is it already there? He builds it. I think we can assume that. And I think you alluded to it very early on in the sort of intro. You said it's maybe not got the coverage, Old Serum,

that we probably deserves. And yesterday I was going through all of the copious books that have been written on castles in England. And it was remarkable how lots of So people go, oh, and then there's a place called Old Zererman. And it's exceptional. It's the biggest. It's got the biggest ringwork. The mot is the only one that's century place. And you think, actually, what's something going on here, isn't there?

It's difficult to get a handle on what sequence may have been. But almost certainly the mot is in Norman innovation, or in terms of that side, anyway, and it's big. It's a very, very big mot. So we've got a castle being built there. And the castle was referred to. The earliest reference to it is, I think, early, 1080s, but I think we're looking at late 1060s. And this all hangs on an interpretation of a charter that is issued by William at his castle in Salisbury and what date that charter was issued

at. So it gets a bit complicated, but it's an early Norman work. But the other thing they do in 1070, all of the Norman project is to break the Anglo-Saxon church. So what the Normans do is they relocate some of the big Anglo-Saxon churches to Roman cities. For example, For example, what we see in Sussex is the bishopric there of Sussex, which was based at Selsea, is moved into the Roman walls at Chichester. We see Litchfield, famous, powerful Mercian bishopric, which is moved to Chester, and the Diocese of Ransbury, tiny little place in North Wiltshire, and Sherbourne, people may know, very famous Anglo-Saxon church now at Sherbourne, those are combined into a single diocese base.

at this new place, Old Serum. So again, what we're seeing is this idea of Kivitatus, the Roman cities' civilization. Again, this imperial stamp is being placed on the English landscape and the Normans are the kind of architects of that. So castle and cathedral are brought there. But I think one of the things that's been really overlooked is the sheer scale of that castle monument. You've got that central mob, but that outer Bailey is enormous. and what the archaeological excavations exposed in the early part of the 20th century and some subsequent excavations in the 1950s, is that the symmetry of the monument?

Whatever road you come in to the Salisbury Basin on, I don't serum, it is, as William Cobbett described, it is three concentrically stacked cheeses. So Cobbett was writing in the early 19th century, and that's what was the forefront of his audience's mind. That's be fair, cheese is always at the forefront of my mind, too. Yeah, exactly. So it's beautifully symmetrical. And the excavations are telling us that's purposeful. Because in one part of the monument, they're cutting back the Iron Age defenses to get the right level.

And in another part of the monument, they're lifting it up to the tune of about 22 feet. This is an enormous earth-moving operation of an unprecedented scale. Take all of that together, and we've definitely got a project. And does the position of the central mark, does that mean anything? Is there a sense that what William might be doing is building out from the centre with a sense that Old Serum is going to get bigger and become more and more important? Or am I reading too much into that? At the risk of over-intellectualising things,

I wonder to a certain extent whether this is a reflection of kind of secular thinking about power at the time. and the idea of divine providence, the idea that at the center lies God's providence, that center lies the king, and that this is a very symbolic statement. If you look anywhere else where the Normans Plunker Castle, and they do it for lots of different reasons, anywhere else the sort of inner castle, if you like, is always on the periphery of a monument. So if you look at somewhere I grew up near Pevency, the castle's dug into the perimeter. at a wall of the Roman fort there at Winchester, at the west end of the city, that's where the

castle is, right up against the west gate. That's the form book. And it seems to me that the castle, if I was building it, with hindsight, I'd tap William on the shoulder and say, look, it's a nice idea to stick it in the middle, but actually, why don't you put it over the east gate, then everyone can see it on the roads, and then you've got lots of room for a central cathedral in the middle. I can say that with hindsight. Just the position of that mock is in itself, I think, a reflection of the Norman vision of their own position in the world. And by digging the mott as well, and this is something that a lot of scholars have been looking at with the idea of donjongs or towers, by digging the mop and putting a tower on top of it,

you are actually creating a new tier in the landscape. So what you're doing is visually to all of those people in that river valley, and it's the confluence of five rivers there. What you're doing is you're saying, this is the new tier. There's a new tier of authority here. And I think the symmetry is about bringing order, which is about bringing civilization.

And when we think about the idea of the city of God and order being brought to the kind of physical structures, there's a lot of writing around this. I think that's what William's trying to do. It's a propaganda thing going on there as well with the local people. Yeah, it sounds a bit like he'd find, found this site that was a kind of an up-and-coming site, but perhaps enough of a blank canvas still that it could be a model for a new Norman way of building a city or imposing themselves on the

landscape? Yeah, I think this is enough of a blank canvas for them to say, we need a new centre of power here. Now, its geostrategic importance should be stated, because it is at the heart of Wessex. Wessex is the wealthiest part of Anglo-Saxon, England, arguably. Wessex really is very well coordinated in its ability to mint coin, its market economies, and of course, West it says the coastline, which it shares with Normandy. So if William really wanted to lock in a power base in southern England, Winchester might be a bit tricky because it's got a lot of people living there and you can't really upset them too much, plan a few houses to build your Newcastle, but you don't want to upset them too much. So Old Serum gives an opportunity to create

a new centre of ducal authority. Now, if you look at what William had done in Normandy, Ballin filets, that's his kind of heartland, if you like, but he has a really important role in developing Khan as a centre of ducal authority in Normandy. And if you look at the way Khan is laid out, there were very close parallels to what was envisaged at Old Serum. So I think that is the model, and it was so effective in Normandy

that I think they're thinking we can do the same in Westings. It's always important to remember that William wasn't a king. he's suddenly having to learn how to be a king. So I guess he can take what's worked for him in Normandy and he can replicate that now, hoping that it will work on a kingly scale rather than just a ducal scale. Yeah, I think so.

I think there's a vision for how it's going to grow and expand. And there again are some critical questions because the geophysical survey of the monument, which was undertaken by a friend and colleague, Dr. Christra, at Southampton University, and they've done an amazing number of surveys over the years. and the work they're doing there is really causing us to radically rethink, not just Old Serum, but the wider landscape as well.

It's an amazing body of work. And what they found with the Geophysical Survey is that inside the monument is really busy. Now, the problem we have with geophysics is we don't date stuff. You know, at the end of the day, and we're getting the pick and shovel out, and that's the only way you can really address some of these questions. But a critical question still remains around Old Serum is the extent to which the city and the town or the urban functions, the tradespeople, the market, Was that inside the hilltop or was it actually planned outside the hilltop?

And that's a question we haven't really quite answered fully. And that's really important to understanding what happens after the 1070s. My own view is I probably would look at places like Fulets and Cannes, where actually what you've got inside the Outer Bailey's there are large open spaces for the performances of power. And if anything, the urban sort of market functions, the traders and so on, they're outside. There's evidence at Old Serum that there is a sort of planned town at the East Gate with its own borough church, its own town church. And the book brings together all the archaeological evidence from mid-19th century all the way through to the 1960s where there were some excavations that have been unpublished.

So I've tried to bring all that together. So there's something going on outside. and my preference is to see what's going on inside as a sort of big ceremonial space. And I think the design now is in part informed by the way in which the Normans are using the monument. And William will use Old Serum for those big display set piece moments. So we have the oath of Serum that he will take there. And Doomsday is presented to him at Old Serum. Clearly he's wanting to associate his rule, his power and his authority.

very specifically with Old Serum. He could have done those things in London in Westminster, but he chooses to do them at Old Serum. Exactly. And again, that's something we've not collectively come together as historians and archaeologists to ring that bell and to say, hey, wake up, this is the natural home of Doomsday.

Because to us, we live in a world where documents are all important, but to the elites and aristocrats and the greater public of the Anglo-Norman world, deed, oath, gesture, and witnessing and being there, they are in many ways more important than a document. That whole performance is as critical, I think, because the document was in its time. A document's gone on to be incredibly important from a historical perspective, but at the point at which you were there experiencing that ceremony,

that's the most important thing. That really locks in the conquest. It's 20 years later than 1066, but it really does. bring home the achievement of King William. And you need a stage to do that on. As I say in the book, when we think about what old serum is, is it a castle? Is it a city? Is it a city in a castle?

Is it a castle in a city? Henry Vovranche was writing this back in the early 13th century. He didn't know. People didn't know what was really going on here. And I think in many ways it's annoyed, though. I think if anything, it's a stage for performing power. And I think when we look at the oath of Sarum, that may very well have been informed by what was going on immediately after the harrying of the north, because once William's gone north and harried the north and built castles all over the north, he comes back to old Sarah. And it's there that he holds some of his less than enthusiastic nobles to account.

And it may have been actually at around that point, 1070, 71, where some of the major earthworking was going on. that he may have looked at that and thought, God, this place really worked for performing Norman royal power. Yeah, I think that probably informed 1086 and the oath of Serum and the links with Doomsday just to mean mean that we need to look at that site and consider how, for a brief period, it was constitutionally, probably one of the most important places in England. And I guess that means that Old Serum ought to be considered

alongside the Bayer Tapestry and Doomsday as a sort. for understanding Norman England? Yeah, exactly. I cut my teacher as an archaeologist, and I'm always at pains to communicate to not just my students, but the wider public, that archaeology can be read like a document. Whether you're reading a parish church

or a medieval cesspit, read it like a document and think about what it tells you. And I think if we want to look for an archaeological document that gives us a window into the Norman psyche, a window into the Norman vision of its own, conquest, its practices, then Old Serum is up there as a document, as you say, with the biotapestry, with Doomsday Book, with some of the chronicles. If you read the physical character of that monument and how it was altered, reconfigured and designed in those critical

years, 1067 through to 1086, that is a project that provides us with a really quite unique window into Williams project. Yeah. And I guess for something then that sits so close to the heart of how Norman kingship views itself and this performative element of royalty, do we have any sense of why it slips from importance? Why does it decline as a site? I think it's a couple of reasons, really. In the sort of power politics of the day, it's very close to the Norman Kings. The first bishop, he's a Lothorindian, the first bishop there, but he is surpassed in 1070s, Bishop Osmond takes over, and he was King William's Chancellor, right-hand man.

So Osmond is given the role of taking over the cathedral at Old Zerum, Castle Cathedral Project going on there. The link between the king and the church there is really tight. Osmond is then followed up with Bishop Roger, who is from Khan. He's in Norman. And he's a very close ally of Henry I. So again, you've got these kind of always like buddies. And that's the point at which things start to fracture. Because by the time we get to the anarchy, Henry I dies,

Bishop Roger at this point is considered the chroniclers, right, that he is considered second only to the king. And especially when the king is over in Normandy trying to sort. or our rebellions over in Normandy. Bishop Roger of Salisbury is the most powerful man in the country. Now, he probably does embezzle some funds. I don't think he was the most popular person, but very powerful. And he swears an early oath of allegiance to Stephen.

And I think probably over the course of the next five years, he realizes that Stephen is not a backer. It seems to me, Stephen's a bit of a wally, really, more than anything. And there's unrest in 1139. and Stephen, perhaps encouraged by some of his leading men, makes a move on Bishop Roger and his lands, and Bishop Roger's sons, Bishop Nigel, with Ely and Bishop Pan Alexander of Lincoln, and he arrests them. And there's a famous episode called The Arrest of the Bishops.

And the great constitutional historian, William Stubbs, wrote that, is the most significant constitutional act since the Norman conquest. I think it's interesting because 1139, and I've written about this, again, another open access publication, people can go and look it up. The downfall of Roger and the way in which he was rubbed out really, it was quite brutal. And the church kicked up a bit of a fuss. You can't treat our bishops like this. But then Stephen's men turned mad and said, your bishop's not behaving like a bishop. He's behaving like a king, really, a very secular lord. So Roger gets rubbed out in quite a brutal fashion. And I think that's really the beginning

of the end for Norman, England. That's the story, and that's 1139. So it's quite a short window when Old Serum is there and is at the centre, and that's the break we see between the bishops of Salisbury and the King of England. But I think the other fault line is that the cathedral, whichever where you look at it, is an afterthought. It's tucked in to the northwest corner. It's not got room to grow.

It's just not where you build cathedrals. And I think that is afterthought. that mock goes up and then they're like right now we need a cathedral oh no we've put the moor over the east gate so let everyone know who's in charge and then go through the castle what passed the castle and then they're the cathedral if it was sat right in the middle of the hill much like the cathedral of durham for example i think it might have even have stayed there but i think those quick decisions that were being made some 1067 through to 1070 1075 ultimately I think that's where the physical topographical fracture lines are.

Old Serum is tied so closely and specifically to Norman kingship that as soon as Norman kingship is broken by kind of Stephen and then obviously Henry the second will move into the Angevin period. That link between the King and Old Serum is broken too. It's so core to the Norman project that once the Norman project is over, the project of Old Serum is also over. Yeah, exactly. It brings us back to this point that actually if you want a document,

an archaeological document to read for what it tells us about, Norman Conquest, or the long Norman Conquest, as it's sometimes called, Old Serum, is exactly that place. And I think what's interesting as well, if you were to talk to anyone in the street, the Norman Conquest is a success. And that's got a lot to do with the fact that in the past, people liked conquest narratives, so it got recorded. It was the last time that England was successfully defeated by a foreign invading force. I'm not so sure about that. I think some other examples, which were just spun in slightly different ways. But, Actually, if we look at the fact that that hill fort is now a greenfield site, there's barely

a piece of exposed work masonry on it to the untrained eyes, it's kind of green hill. And there's this wonderful city down in the valley. So old term failed. So whilst the narrative sources, the chronicles, the doomsday book, but actually, we all tell us about this wonderful success, actually in the long-term perspectives of conquest and colonialism, some of those normal ideas failed. And Old Serum, I think, is an indication of how, in a long term, those types of conquests fail. And that ultimately, it's, I wouldn't say the market that wins out,

but it's the bottom-up forces in that landscape that win out. How then do we stop places like Old Serum being forgotten? It has such a story to tell, and we can try and draw attention to it. And obviously there's lots of study that goes on, and there's previously been archaeology. but how do we make sure that we keep old serum and that we remember what it was? Well, that's a good question because, let's face it, the British government hasn't been coined to arts, humanities, culture, heritage. We've seen cuts since 2010 amounting to around about third of budgets.

The ethical sleeping crisis, cost of got up, funding's gone down. It's probably a more challenging environment now than it's ever been to make the most of our heritage. But we have to be creative and we have to think, a little bit outside of the box. English heritage, I think, do a marvelous job, actually, of stewarding the inner castle. I would say to anyone, it's a fantastic visit. The guidebook is excellent. And it actually, a lot of people get off the train and go to Stonehenge, I don't know why.

It looks like a garden course, the way it's managed. If you want a really good weekend break, you've got the cathedral. You've got a fantastic museum as well, and Salisbury Museum. The new exhibitions are opening soon. All of the finds from the medieval city of Salisbury and from Old Serum are on display there. The West Excalorie has got a deep time story. Get on the bus, pop out to Old Serum as well. What a weekend?

We've got to think about new ways of telling the story, and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to say, this is a really important Norman place. But if anyone is interested in the process of English towns, medieval towns, is there a better place to go? I ask because the great thing about Old Serum is like a window, an inverted mirror, I should say, to Salisbury. Everything that's wonderful about Salisbury was what was bad about Old Serum. And what in Salisbury is the vision in the early 13th century of what a medieval city should look like versus a vision of what, slightly overbearing the king with imperialian ambitions, thinks a medieval city should be.

That was a wonderful pitch for the Salisbury and Old Sarum Tourist Board. Great reasons to go and visit. Yeah, I lived there for about 10, 12 years, and it is a lovely place to go and visit. It's a good weekend break. I had a great aunt. She lived for a long time in Wilton, so we used to go to Wilton House, where they've got a fantastic, like, adventure playground thing that I played in for hours as a child. And then she lived on the Devises Road and overlooked Old Sarum.

So from her living room window, you could see Old Serum. And this was when I was still young enough, that meant absolutely nothing to me. me, the thought of going and staying there now would blow my mind, but I missed all of that in being far too young to understand it all. But definitely, definitely, Salisbury is a wonderful place to go. If listeners go to Old Serum, what should they look out for? Have you got a favorite part, something that you would tell them to go and check out? Obviously, go into the inner castle and what they did in the early 20th century is they tried to reinstate the walls and the tower and the courtyarded building. But think about what is underneath that mob.

because archaeologically that is so tantalising to think that immediately below the upcast of that mop was the last day of Anglo-Saxon England. And that to me, if I could, I don't think English Heritage should let me, but if I could grade off that mop and excavate what the mop buried, that buried surface.

And what you can do is you can stand on the outside of the castle and you can trace the line of the original ground surface and where it goes into the mott. And under there is the last day of Anglo-Saxon, England. And they did in the early 20th century when they were excavating Old Serral Castle. And to be honest, it wasn't really an excavation. It was more of a kind of taking all the demolition debris out

and trying to just identify where the main structures were. But they did excavate a well. And it turned out to be a false well. that they got only so far in digging this well and then they decided to call it off. Whoever originally dug the well and the excavators did that before I was call it off. At the end of the season in October,

just before they're packing up, they thought, oh, let's go back into that well. Let's cut through the staining of the well, which is the wall of the well, and let's excavate that buried surface. And what they found was really tantalising. They found quite a lot of Roman pottery, or Romano-British pottery, you should probably say.

They found midden. They found what they called filth and midden and blackish soil. It's kind of stuff that us are just absolutely love. But they found a walled structure. So they were digging galleries. Okay. So this is like health and safety nightmare without timber supports. Okay.

They found the original level of the ground surface that the mot is built on top of. And they dug five foot high galleries in two directions. Then they found some Romano-British pottery. They found what they called Norman pottery, which I actually think it's probably late Anglo-Saxon pottery there. But they also found this walled structure. And what's really interesting about the drawings of that walled structure and the descriptions in Lieutenant Colonel Hawley's diary,

he was writing a diary at the time, is that they're reusing cut ashlar blocks in it. So I think there was a Roman structure there, and I think that structure is probably a late Anglo-Saxon church, tower or something like that, which has been buried, basically. The Normans have just trashed it and buried it. So yeah, if you go to that monument, just think about the impact, the destruction of that once important aristocratic site and the way it was turned into this huge, vast, monumental circle. Really, I guess a microcosm of what's happening in the wider country.

It's the crushing of one system and the building of a new one over the top of it. Yeah, their normans are smart. They're not changing things too much. Wherever there's an existing high status place, they're doing something to augment it. And they might be adding a motte. They might be adding a tower. If you look at some of the big cities, places like Lincoln, for example, Exeter, they're building castles.

But they're actually building castles in parts of cities, which were already quite high status. Colchester would be the classic example. Monster keep. They built an absolutely huge key. They build it on the site of the temple of Claudius. This monumental temple, which I think they would have been aware of that, probably also the site of a high-status Angles-Axon site, and that's where they build their main castles.

Angles-Ax, England, is one of the wealthiest parts of Northern Europe, the centralised power that the state has. It compares very favourably to other parts of Europe, where actually power has dissipated between local lords. If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it. What they do is they come in and they put their stamp on places that are already quite important. And in that way, what we actually see in the archaeological record is very high levels of continuity. And a lot of the time, these castles don't disrupt things.

If anything, they almost accelerate the way in which towns and urban centres grow. So the archaeological evidence tells a slightly different story to the drama of the documents. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Alex. It's been absolutely fascinating to think a bit more closely and carefully about Old Serum, to try to understand it a bit better and hopefully to give listeners a reason to go and visit it too, so thank you very much. Alex is the co-editor of Tales of Two Cities, Settlement and Suburb, which is packed with information and interpretation all about this site. If you've enjoyed this episode of Gone Medieval, you might also like the episode The Story of The Castle with John Goodall, and a couple that we have on one of Old Serum's most famous. residents, Eleanor of Aquitaine 2. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back next time to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium

in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. It really does help us and you'll be doing us a huge favour. You can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts add free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at History Hits com forward slash subscribe. As a special gift, you can also get 50% of your first three months when you use the code medieval at checkout. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit.