For most people, Salisbury in Wiltshire conjures up the quintessential image of an English city, with its soaring cathedral, manicured grounds and elegant town houses, all set in a beguiling Close. Yet it was not always so...
Old Salisbury, or Sarum as it was known by at least the eleventh century, once stood two miles to the north of the present centre, where the then church and the King's military muscle cohabited cheek-by-jowl, and suffered the brutal tensions such a dysfunctional neighbourhood was bound to provoke.
After the move of the clergy in 1220, a 'new' Cathedral rose up to the heavens but it too soon succumbed to the darker side of life. Prisoners of war, vagabonds, deadly choristers and an organist intent on murdering his dean, all brought shame on this holy edifice. There were the witches too, hanged for conjuring up the Devil or casting harmful spells.
Murder, plague, famine, pestilence - all once occupied Salisbury's inglorious past - when you could recoil at sadistic monarchs and wicked barons; marvel at marauding monks or wonder at wayward nuns. You might gaze woefully into the prisons, perhaps stand before the gallows or reach out to the sorrowful inmates of Fisherton asylum.
But then Salisbury's inhabitants have seldom escaped pain and suffering: visitors arriving on the new Victorian steam locomotives that left the tracks, and plunged into a swollen brook; five (maybe six) tormented souls, who committed suicide and who all had an unwelcome connection to the same local hostelry; the card cheat who lost more than his money for being found out; and a lovelorn doctor who vanished without trace - only to turn up years later, still clutching his sweetheart's letter. Even England's most wanted war-time revolutionary, deserter and sometime murderer was forced to flee, first to Wales, then to Scotland and finally to his death.
Outside the city, lepers and thieves (without their eyes) were cast aside; and plague pits contained the hastily dispatched. Prehistory witnessed macabre deaths - and a hundred and one uses for a corpse! In the Saxon era, scores of victims lost their heads to ritual, punishment and war. All the while iconic Stonehenge still stands sentinel to long forgotten sufferings. In the 20th century, fighting, death and the dangerous new art of flight brought disaster to nearby Salisbury Plain.
It's all a long way from the quaint cathedral city you thought you knew ...
David J. Vaughan is the author of Bloody British History: Salisbury. Salisbury has one of the most gruesome histories on record. Human remains filled its barrows, its nobles were tortured, its witches hanged and a deadly disease once lurked in its murky waters. There was no safety in its inns either, for one was plagued with suicides and another hid a severed hand. Even the introduction of the railways led to death and destruction. It's all a long way from a quaint cathedral city you thought you knew ...