England Guide
Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire
Salisbury Cathedral
Opening time: Daily 7.15am–6.15pm, mid-June to late Aug Mon– Sat closes 7.15pm. Chapter house: March to mid-June Mon– Sat 9.30am–5.30pm, Sun noon–5.30pm; mid-June to Aug Mon– Sat 9.30am–6.45pm, Sun noon–5.30pm; Sept & Oct Mon– Sat 9.30am–5.30pm, Sun 12.45–5.30pm; Nov– Feb Mon– Sat 10am–4.30pm, Sun 12.45–4.30pm
Price: £5 suggested donation; tours to the roof and tower £5.50
Begun in 1220, Salisbury Cathedral was mostly completed within forty years and is thus unusually consistent in its style, with one extremely prominent exception – the spire, which was added a century later and at 404ft is the highest in England. Its survival is something of a miracle, for the foundations penetrate only about six feet into marshy ground, and when Christopher Wren surveyed it he found the spire to be leaning almost two and a half feet out of true. He added further tie-rods, which finally arrested the movement.
The interior is over-austere after James Wyatt's brisk eighteenth-century tidying, but there's an amazing sense of space and light in its high nave, despite the sombre pillars of grey Purbeck marble, which are visibly bowing beneath the weight they bear. Monuments and carved tombs line the walls, where they were neatly placed by Wyatt. Other features not to miss are the vaulted colonnades of the cloisters, and the octagonal chapter house, which displays a rare original copy of the Magna Carta, and whose walls are decorated with a frieze of scenes from the Old Testament.