7/9 Old Sarum & Normal Castle Ruins

The  Old Sarum site includes two things:  the remains of an iron-age ring fort from about 400 BC and a ruined Norman castle built in its center.  There is evidence of an earlier occupation from about 3,000 BC, but the  There is not much left of the original settlement made in about 3,000 BC, but the banks and ditches of the ring fort are still evident, mainly because the Norman castle took advantage of the earthworks as part of its protective surroundings.  

This is how the site looks now, with the ruins of the norman castle in the middle, and ruins of a cathedral built outside of the castle.  The outer ring is the original Old Sarum. 

 

The description and diagram below explains how this place looked when it was built by the 

 

First, the castle, contained in its own ring of earthworks.  

 

 

The entrance to the castle area.  This entrance cuts through part of what once was a castle wall, but as you will see, not much of the castle is left, especially since a lot of its stones were used for other local construction.  

 

 

Indoor plumbing or a sort! 

A view from the castle raised earth barrier.  In the distance, you can see Salisbury Cathedral and its famous spire. 

This area is full of chalk and flint.  If you look carefully at the broken rocks in this part of a wall, you can see that they are flint.  Amazing. 

A clever way to keep sheep out (or in) and visitors out!  It took me a minute to figure out order of steps I had to take, but this gate leads to the original Old Sarum walls and ditch.  

 

It is really hard to tell how high the earth wall is and how deep the ditch is, but each is at least 20' high or deep.  No doubt it was even higher was originally built by the ancients.  It is an extremely big ring, so it is hard to imagine all the digging and baskets of earth it took to build these.  It probably was worked on over a couple of hundred years.  

I had some extra time after spending an hour or so here, so my next stop this day was to Salisbury and the cathedral!