Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury was built on a new site and in only 38 years, so it is unusually unified. The spire, added half a century later, is the tallest in England. The cathedral is a textbook example of Early English Gothic: long, low and set in a great lawn.
The old cathedral stood at Old Sarum, a fortified hill north of the city, where the clergy lived cramped beside a royal castle. In 1220 work began on a new cathedral in the meadows down by the river. The canon Elias of Dereham probably directed the work. The church was largely complete in 1258, and the west front, cloister and chapter house were finished in the following decades. The tower and tall spire were built only in the early 14th century. The building is of Chilmark limestone, with shafts of dark Purbeck marble.
The plan is long and cruciform, with two transepts, a typically English feature. The nave is lower and narrower than in the French cathedrals, but its length gives the space a strong direction. The dark marble shafts contrast with the pale stone. The windows are narrow pointed lancets, often in groups. The spire is 123 metres high, the tallest in Britain. Its weight made the crossing piers bend, and they have since been reinforced with strainer arches. The chapter house is octagonal and has a vault carried by a single central column.
The chapter house displays one of the four surviving originals of the 1215 Magna Carta. The cathedral’s mechanical clock of 1386 is regarded as one of the oldest working clocks in the world. John Constable painted the cathedral several times in the 1820s, seen from the meadows and from the bishop’s garden. In the 18th century the architect James Wyatt made sweeping alterations and among other things demolished the free-standing bell tower, which was later severely criticised. Salisbury remains the classic example of Early English Gothic.