Old Sarum — Attraction in England

Disappointing to me. While the site itself on the mound seems impressive from afar, it feels very lacking once there, as it feels like a lot of the site is just empty apart from a car park (of course, ugh). The ruins of the inner castle and cathedral that do remain are nice for a quick look, but there's very little depth of information given on the placards; and almost all that is provided focuses exclusively on Norman times onwards, despite the first one you see upon arrival proudly proclaiming the over-5000 years of history of the site. So there's about 4000 years left either unexplored or unexplained here, with the last 1000 or so gone over in broad strokes with no real archaeological explanation of how it is understood from the ruins that we see today. As someone who's particularly interested in the archaeology and how we interpret these sites, a very big letdown.

Instead, it seems that if you do want to find further information, you're obligated to either look it up online or buy the guidebook from the visitor centre, at what feels like a far-too-steep £4.50, especially as an English Heritage member. What I would recommend is the Salisbury Museum instead (free with a National Art Pass), they have a wealth of information about the Salisbury area including Old Sarum, which seems comical that an unrelated museum is having to do the legwork for English Heritage.

If you're coming here by bus, do be aware that the path from the bus stop is (a) overgrown and not well-maintained, forcing you to either cross to the other side before crossing back, or walking on the grass right next to the road, and (b) ends in an ad-hoc car park area with a gated trail that terminates at the road to the actual car park and site. It does feel like English Heritage could do more to encourage and improve non-car transportation to...

What an amazing place!! As you drive to the location, you are met with a MASSIVE earth work that dominates the entire valley. The little track road that leads into the site passes through this earthwork to reach the car park. Parking is limited and didn't seem capable of meeting the needs of all the visitors. Toilets are set, like bunkers, into the side of the earth work, co located with the carpark and the pay and display machine (£4 for the day). This site is OLD, with history back thousands of years into the beginning of the iron age. It has been used to dominate the area and defend armies all the way through history by many different political actors. Today, it was bright and sunny, which made it an awesome place to walk and view the surrounding terrain. I can understand why this location was begun, but, my mind boggles at the digging effort required to create it. The vast ditches are seriously vast. You can do multiple laps of the site at different levels and marvel at the sheer hills you would need to breach to attack this place. The castle, which dominates the centre of the site, was left to collapse and then quarried for the creation of buildings in Salisbury. It was derelict in antiquity, so a lot of the information about the site is gained from other sources or from interpreted from archaeology that took place a long time ago. English Heritage control the castle, where there is an entrance fee, but the rest of the site is free to access. It is well worth your time to visit and...

We broke the journey home with a visit to Old Sarum as I had some work to do nearby. On advice from my customer we actually walked to the edge of the original fortifications. On our other visits we have been into the castle and seen the motte but not really seen the scale of the Iron Age hillfort it was built upon. The ditch and ramparts were massive and must have been a real challenge for any attackers. However, the other thing we were warned about was the wind! Despite it being a gloriously sunny day it was freezing on top of the hill! We walked around about half of the circumference before I got fed up and we then did a circuit of the inner motte before crossing the drawbridge to head inside, Deb constantly muttering how much she hated the wind and the wind gods..... Inside was marginally sheltered, in places, and there wasn't a huge amount left of the Saxon and Norman buildings as they had all been looted for the dressed stone. There were plenty of information boards that gave an idea of the structures and their history, including the cathedral of which even less remained. We had an excellent chat with the English Heritage guy on site, Tom I think? He was explaining about the history of the site and the Roman structures that had been discovered as well as Neolithic sites linked to Old Sarum and the difficulty in excavating what was left. We followed that with a coffee before going back to work...