OLD SARUM and a visit with the Webbers.

 

Old Sarum is the ancient place where the original settlers in this region built their first castle and town. We became aware of the history of this place when we read SARUM, by Edward Rutherford, an English novelist who writes in the style of James Mitchner. In Sarum, Rutherford traces a family starting in Southern England near Stonehenge to the 20th century. The panel to the left which I cropped from "5000 Years of History" map to the right, traces the history of the people living here.

These three picture are the remains of the old castle.
Our first stop here is the old Royal Castle, which was replaced in 1220 by the Salisbury Cathedral we just left.

The grounds of the old cathedral.

Below, a nice view of the entire region. This was a stitch of two pictures done flawlessly by my ArcSoft panorama software.

Looking back at the new Salisbury cathedral a mile away. 
More about the white chalk.  This whole region has this white stuff as it's subsoil -- producing the white cliffs of Dover and the cliffs along the southern English coast. This kind of soil  produced an agricultural boom in the 12th century allowing the country to become very affluent and provided the resources to afford the building of the great cathedrals of the region.

Again, the yellow line marks our long afternoon journey from Salisbury to Crowborough where we were to have dinner with Brian and Joan Webber -- our long time friends from England. It was a torturous drive, with many delays. Note how close were were from Tunbridge Wells, where many of our Hereford dinner friends lived. We could have rung them up. 
We had a nice dinner with Brian and Joan and Michael and his daughter Ruby. Michael was our daughters good friend from Nottingham in 1972.  Here we are having a lunch at a pub the next day, one day before we were to fly back to BWI. 
The sanctuary interior. The organ is on the left wall of the narrow Quire. 
Behind this vault is buried Edward Gibbon, author of "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire". 
Another view of the wooden carving separating the Quire and the rest of the sanctuary. 

We had planned to visit Down House which was where Darwin did all his research in evolution. But it rained all day and trucking through his garden in the rain did not appeal to us. Instead, we visited FLETCHING PARISH CHURCH, seen above, to the left, and below.
This organ may never been photographed like this. There was no room for a proper single shot, so this is a stitch of two taken across the narrow width of the Quire. 
And so, our three week event ends with this last picture of Brian, Joan, myself and Elaine. The next day, we got up early to drive to Heathrow. We checked in the car, and I placed my suitcase right in front of the bumper scratch when  the attendant inspected it. Thanks, Brian, for the suggestion. 

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