The North Walk is one of the roads within Salisbury Cathedral’s Close. Both North Street in Wilton and North Street in Salisbury are part of small groups of roads which ‘box the compass’ to some extent. So in Salisbury, North Street meets West Street, East Street and South Street at what used to be the ‘Bird in the hand’ pub. In Wilton, however, there is no East Street.
When and if I get to ‘East Street’ I’ll discuss possible reasons for this…
Anyhow, the word ‘north’, as I understand it may be derived from an old Italian (Oscan-Umbrian) word for ‘left’ – nerttrak. This may seem a bit of a stretch, in that ‘the North’ is only ‘to the left’ if you are looking in the right direction (East), but there is a similar connection between the words for ‘left’ and ‘North’ in the Old Irish tuaisceart1
The convention that North is ‘up’ on the map is possibly a European one, going back to Ptolemy 2.
As chance has it there was a brief item on the radio last night about how the magnetic North Pole moves over time. The scientist being interviewed mentioned that the positioning in Captain Cooks log of his explorations is consistently out by a small factor and that this is believed to be because the North Pole is not in the same place now as it was then.
Hotels in Salisbury
For accommodation, see the Hotels in Salisbury page.
