Pilgrims Mead is in the Bishopdown area to the north of Salisbury.
The inspiration for the name ‘Pilgrims Mead’ is relatively clear – many of the roads in the ‘Bishopdown Farm’ estate are named after individual saints (for example St Thomas Way or St Clements Way) or after some other religious concepts (e.g. Apostle Way, The Crusades).
‘Pilgrims Mead’ obviously fits into the second category.
Pilgrimage and Anglicanism
I think it’s fair to say that pilgrimage as an activity is not now a significant part of Anglican or English culture, particularly if you compare it to the Muslim hajj, or the number of people visiting Lourdes or Rome.
Pilgrimage is, however, part of English culture in other ways. Chaucer’s characters in Canterbury Tales are on a pilgrimage, Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress speaks for itself, and the initial settlers in the New World were typically known as the Pilgrim fathers.
My view, for what it’s worth, is that these cultural references to pilgrimage, and the Merry England they invoke would inspire the naming of Pilgrims Mead.
Mead – meadow or drink?
Mead has a double meaning. Either:
- mead – the old English word for meadow, or
- mead – the old honey-based alcoholic drink
Perhaps the second of these two actually makes more sense in the context of the phrase ‘Pilgrims Mead’ – I can’t see why a pilgrim would have a meadow, but it seems likely that he or she might have some use for the drink. Whether or not this was the intention of the developer, I wouldn’t like to say.
