Book Review: ‘Salisbury’ – RLP Jowitt

This post is about a book called simply ‘Salisbury’ by R.L.P. Jowitt¹

I found the book in the Salisbury Oxfam shop for about three pounds. It was published in 1951, so it’s not a book you’re going to find in Waterstones, but on the other hand it probably won’t be that difficult to find second-hand. At the time of writing it’s available second hand through Amazonfor £4.99, including postage²

Image from Amazon

The book is divided into seven chapters:

• Old Sarum
• History of the Cathedral and its Bishops
• The Cathedral
• The Close
• History of New Sarum
• The City
• The Neighbourhood

I’ll give a brief outline of each chapter, then come to some sort of conclusion.

Old Sarum

The book gives a clear overview of Old Sarum’s history. It’s particularly good on the characters involved – Bishop Roger is ‘a man of forceful character’³. It includes this quote from William of Malmesbury “he built anew the Church of Salisbury, and beautified it so that it yields to none in England, but surpasses many”.

History of the Cathedral and its Bishops

The second chapter of the book is especially strong. Again, what I got in particular from the book was a sense of the characters involved.

Mr Jowitt digs up some pithy quotations on some of the Bishops. Bishop Bingham was ‘a man of great learning’⁴. De York was ‘better versed in the laws of the realm, which he had chiefly studied, than in the laws of God’⁵.

My favourite was the comment by Thomas Walsingham on Bishop Wyville ⁶‘

It was hard to say of him whether he was more dunce or dwarf, more unlearned or more unhandsome’.

I’m a bit disappointed that we don’t have a Wyville Road so I could re-use that quote….

I learnt that the Cathedral has been prone to flooding – in 1635 clergy rode horses through the church to avoid getting wet, and in 1915 a priest had to wade through flood water to get to the choir area to celebrate the Epiphany.

Jowitt is particularly scathing about Bishop Shute Barrington and his architect James Wyatt who, he says, ‘will ever be held in execration by all lovers of Salisbury and of medieval architecture. ⁷‘

The Cathedral

The chapter on the Cathedral starts with a quote from Pugin, who:

on the occasion of his last visit to Salisbury stood at the north-east corner of The Close and remarked, “Well I have travelled all over Europe in search of architecture, and I have seen nothing like this.”

Subsequent to that, Jowitt provides a detailed guide to the Cathedral, which, given that the interior hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years is probably as useful now as it was when the book was published. I’m looking forward to taking the book with me next time I visit.

Mr Jowitt aims another kick or two at Wyatt and Barrington, mentioning the ‘iconoclastic vandalism of James Wyatt, well named “The Destroyer”‘⁸

Jowitt also reminds me of something that I think I once knew but had since forgotten – the provenance of the stone structure in the south east corner of the Council Grounds. He says:

At the north end of the north transept is now placed the tomb of Bishop Blyth (1494-99) removed here by Wyatt. There was formerly a doorway here, the porch leading to which was removed by Wyatt altogether, and is now to be seen in the grounds of the Council House ⁹

The Close

At the start of Chapter 4, in common with other writers, Mr Jowitt pays tribute to the work done by Bishop Barrington and James Wyatt in the Cathedral Close:

Hard words have been said about Bishop Barrington for all the wanton damage he caused Wyatt to commit in the Cathedral, but tribute must certainly be paid him for the creation of the great lawn, from which the Cathedral rises so nobly. It was formerly a rough uneven graveyard and quite an unworthy approach to the Cathedral. The Hon Jon Byng, writing in 1782 of a visit to Salisbury, says:

“The Close is comfortable and all the divines are well seated but the house of God is kept in sad order, to the disgrace of our Church, and of Christianity…The Churchyard is like a cow-common, as dirty and as neglected and through the centre stagnates a boggy ditch etc”

The chapter on The Close is part tour guide and part history. There are many fascinating pieces of information – including these snippets:

• James II stayed at the Bishops Palace with Seth Ward after the 1688 Dutch Invasion.
• There is a mark on the wall opposite number 28 which marks the location of the shadow of the Cathedral spire at midday.
• Coventry Padmore wrote ‘The Angel in the House’ at the Old Deanery ¹⁰
• Lt-Gen Henry Shrapnell, who invented the explosive shell, lived at the Kings House in the Close ¹¹
• The Walton Canonry is so named because it was built by Isaak Walton, ‘son of the piscator’¹², early in the eighteenth century¹³

I particularly enjoyed Jowitt’s desciption of Chorister’s Green:

At the north-west corner of the Close is the Green ‘a charmingly intimate small edition of the greater Close, of which it forms a part’¹⁴

History of New Sarum

Chapter 5 is a dash through the history of the city.

Jowitt is good on the history of the Guilds – I’d like to know more about them. The Guilds seem to have inhabited an area somewhere between trade association, trades union, secret society and local government. There’s a digitized book on the Salisbury guilds that I need to read at some stage¹⁵.

This section contains some nice contemporary pictures which I’ll upload at some stage – as ever the thing that strikes me most is how few cars there are. There is a brief discussion of road names – it’s always re-assuring to know there are other people interested in the meanings of the names of roads!

Again, the book has some colourful pen pictures of Salisbury’s historical characters. John Halle, part of whose house now forms the foyer of the Odeon was:

‘a man of violent and overbearing temper, and by sheer bullying force of character, combined with his great wealth, derived from wool, held the office of Mayor four times,as well as representing the city in Parliament.”

Jowitt tells how Halle used ‘such violent language’ in a court hearing in 1465 that he was imprisoned in the Tower. He was elected mayor while still in prison.

Jowitt gives us some details on royal visits to Salisbury – something I didn’t know was that Richard II summoned Parliament to meet at the Bishop’s Palace in The Close.

The greatest ‘learning’ that I gained from the book comes towards the end of Chapter 5. It is this:

Communication by road with London and Exeter vastly improved during this Century (17th). As early as 1658, a very primitive coach had run thrice weekly in each direction, the time taken between London and Salisbury being two days and the fare £1.¹⁶

I’ve always been aware that communications were slower in the past, and I’ve theoretically known how important the railways were in the development of the country, but I’d never fully appreciated that it would take two days to get from Salisbury to London. I’m sure this says more about me as a student than anything else, but I’d never really taken this basic fact ‘on-board’ before. It throws a different light on local and national history.

In the early 19th Century the Quicksilver coach cut the journey time to 8 hours and 27 minutes. The Quicksilver service ended when the railway opened in 1846.

The City

The Chapter on ‘The City’ is largely a guidebook. It’s very well put together, but, by it’s nature, it’s much the same as other guidebooks to Salisbury.

It’s actually quite interesting to see what has changed – we no longer have Style and Gerrish, or the Gaumont Cinema; Lord Herbert of Lea no longer stands in the Market Square; the museum is no longer in Saint Ann’s Street.

The Neighbourhood

The final chapter is on the area around Salisbury. Its contains some good bits of trivia:

• Longford Castle is modelled on the Danish Castle of Uranienborg. It was largely financed by the shipwreck of a Spanish galleon on the Isle of Wight, which was then under the jurisdiction of the Gorges family who owned it.¹⁷
• the ‘Moot’ in Downton was the site of the Saxon hundred-moot – I think this is a regional meeting. ‘Moot’ here is, I think, the same word as in ‘Its a moot point’ – a point for discussion at the meeting.

My thoughts on Jowitt’s Salisbury

As you may have guessed if you have read this far, I think Jowitt’s Salisbury is a really good little book.

The things that might be seen to date the book – the focus on the perceived character of individuals, and the way the writer uses language ¹⁸ are things that I tend to enjoy.

The book does a good job in covering a great deal of ground in only just over 100 pages. It’s got some charming photos, which I’ll scan and upload at some stage¹⁹.

More importantly than all of the above, the book made me look at some parts of my home town in a different way.

At the time of writing there’s a copy on AmazonAmazon for less than a fiver. I think it’s well worth the money.

Footnotes

1. This isn’t something I’ve done on the website before, but I thought it might be interesting for me, and, hopefully useful for others to type up my thoughts on some of the books I’ve read [↩]
2. The price will vary over time, depending on who is sellling. The picture is an affiliate link that will take you through to the Amazon website – my copy didn’t come with the dust jacket sadly [↩]
3. page 5 [↩]
4. page 15 [↩]
5. page 15 [↩]
6. page 17 [↩]
7. page 27 [↩]
8. page 32 [↩]
9. page 36 [↩]
10. page 55 [↩]
11. page 56 [↩]
12. ‘fisherman’ – I think he was the author of the ‘Compleat Angler
    ‘ [↩]
13. page 56 [↩]
14. page 51 [↩]
15. Full text of “The ancient trade guilds and companies of Salisbury” [↩]
16. page 69 [↩]
17. page 81 [↩]
18. the vocabulary is sometimes a bit obscure – I guessed what ‘gnomon’, ‘piscator’, ‘fenestration’ and ‘halberdiers’ mean from the context, but I certainly didn’t know them before. Respectively they are – the bit in the middle of a sun-dial, a Fisherman, windows, and people with big clubs used in making textiles – I think! [↩]
19. I believe the book will be out of copyright [↩]