thumb|upright=1.5|A reconstruction of Old Sarum in the 12th century, housed at [[Salisbury Cathedral]]
Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, South West England, is the ruined and deserted site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury. Situated on a hill about north of modern Salisbury near the A345 road, the settlement appears in some of the earliest records in the country. It is an English Heritage property and is open to the public.
The great stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury are near Old Sarum and indications of prehistoric settlement at the site have been discovered from as early as 3000 BC. Around 400 BC, during the Iron Age, a hillfort was erected, controlling the intersection of two trade paths and the River Avon. The site continued to be occupied during the Roman period, when the paths were made into roads. The Saxons took the British fort in the 6th century and later used it as a stronghold against Vikings. The Normans constructed a motte and bailey castle, a stone curtain wall, and Old Sarum Cathedral. A royal palace was built within Old Sarum Castle for and was subsequently used by Plantagenet monarchs. This heyday of the settlement lasted for around 300 years until disputes between the Sheriff of Wiltshire, keeper of the castle, and the Bishop of Salisbury at the cathedral finally led to the removal of the church into the nearby plain. As New Salisbury grew up around the construction site for the new cathedral in the early 13th century, buildings at Old Sarum were dismantled for their stone and the old town dwindled. Its long-neglected castle was abandoned by in 1322 and sold by in 1514.
Although the settlement was effectively uninhabited by the 17th century, its landowners continued to have parliamentary representation into the 19th century, making it one of the most notorious of the rotten boroughs that existed before the Reform Act 1832. Old Sarum served as a pocket borough of the Pitt family.
Old Sarum is also the name of a modern settlement north-east of the monument, where there is a grass strip airfield and business parks, and large 21st-century housing developments at Old Sarum and Longhedge.
Name
The present name seems to be a ghost word or corruption of the medieval Latin and Norman forms of the name Salisbury, such as the Sarisburie that appeared in the Domesday Book of 1086. (These were adaptions of the earlier names Searoburh, Searobyrig, calques of the indigenous Brittonic name with the Old English suffixes and , denoting fortresses or their adjacent settlements.) The longer name was first abbreviated as Sar̅, but, as such a mark was used to contract the Latin suffix -um (common in placenames), the name was confused and became Sarum sometime around the 13th century. The earliest known use was on the seal of the hospital at New Salisbury, which was in use in 1239. The 14th-century Bishop Wyvil was the first to describe himself as episcopus Sarum.
The addition of "old" to the name distinguished it from Sarum or New Sarum, names used in some contexts for the newer settlement.
History
thumb|left|alt=Old Sarum at Noon, a graphite sketch on slightly textured, medium white wove paper, 23.2 cm × 33.7 cm, 20 July 1829. Yale Center for British Art.|An 1829 sketch of Old Sarum by [[John Constable, displaying the site of the abandoned hillfort]]
Prehistory
There is evidence that early hunters and, later, farming communities occupied the site. A protective hill fort, named Sorviodunum, was constructed by the local inhabitants around 400 BC a British tribe apparently ruled by Gaulish exiles. Although the dynasty's founder Commius had become a foe of Caesar's, his sons submitted to Augustus as client kings. Their realm became known as the Regni and the overthrow of one of them, Verica, was the casus belli used to justify the Emperor Claudius's invasion. The settlement appeared in the Welsh Chronicle of the Britons as ) and as Caer-Wallawg. Bishop Ussher argued for its identification with the listed among the 28 cities of Britain by the History of the Britons traditionally ascribed to Nennius.
Saxon period
Cynric, king of Wessex, captured the hill in 552. It remained part of Wessex thereafter It subsequently became the site of Wilton's mint. uniting his former sees of Sherborne and Ramsbury into a single diocese which covered the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, and Berkshire. He and Saint Osmund began the construction of the first Salisbury cathedral but neither lived to see its completion in 1092. and Lord Chancellor of England; he was responsible for the codification of the Sarum Rite, the compilation of the Domesday Book, and—after centuries of advocacy from Salisbury's bishops—was finally canonized by Pope in 1457.
The Domesday Book was probably presented to William the Conqueror at Old Sarum in 1086, by the Oath of Salisbury. Two other national councils were held there: one by William Rufus in 1096 Bishop Roger was a close ally of who served as his viceroy during the king's absence to Normandy and directed the royal administration and exchequer along with his extended family. He refurbished and expanded Old Sarum's cathedral in the 1110s.
Angevin period
Medieval Sarum also seems to have had industrial facilities such as kilns and furnaces.
An early 12th-century observer, William of Malmesbury, called Sarum a town "more like a castle than city, being environed with a high wall", and noted that "notwithstanding that it was very well accommodated with all other conveniences, yet such was the want for water that it sold at a great rate". Holinshed denied this and noted that the hill was "very plentifully served with springs and wells of very sweet water"; described his prebendary as "barren, dry, and solitary, exposed to the rage of the wind" and the cathedral "as a captive on the hill where it was built, like the ark of God shut up in the profane house of Baal." Holinshed records that the clerics brawled openly with the garrison troops.
Modern period
thumb|The exposed foundations of the cathedral
thumb|Old Sarum in 1723
The castle grounds were sold by in 1514. was an extra-parochial area and became a civil parish in 1858, but the civil parish was abolished in 1894 and merged with Stratford sub Castle. In 1891 the parish had a population of 13. The site and surrounding area is now the northernmost part of Salisbury civil parish.
The site of the castle and cathedral is considered a highly important British monument: it was among the 26 English locations scheduled by the 1882 Ancient Monuments Protection Act, the first such British legislation. That protection has subsequently continued, expanding to include some suburban areas west and south-east of the outer bailey. It was also listed as a Grade I site in 1972.
Between 1909 and 1915, W.H. St J. Hope, W. Hawley, and D.H. Montgomerie excavated the site for the Society of Antiquaries of London. as well as the street plan of the medieval city. The survey made use of soil resistivity to electric current, electrical resistivity tomography, magnetometry, and ground-penetrating radar. A paved carpark and grass overflow carpark are provided in the eastern area of the outer bailey.
In 1917, during World War I, farmland about north-east of Old Sarum, along the Portway, was developed as the 'Ford Farm' aerodrome. That became Old Sarum Airfield, which remained in operation with a single grass runway until at least 2019 with a small business park which developed along the north edge of the airfield. As of January 2023 the airfield is still operational, but only by prior arrangement.
Around 800 homes were built on the north side of the Portway between 2008 and 2016, and this area (which includes Old Sarum Primary School) is also called Old Sarum. From 2018, further housing called Longhedge Village, around 750 homes accessed from the A345, was built immediately north of the earlier development. These areas all fall within Laverstock civil parish, while the monument itself – separated from modern development by about of farmland – is within the Salisbury City area.