A Literary Tour of Salisbury

Situated about 70 miles west of London in the county of Wiltshire, Salisbury's magnificent cathedral has the tallest spire in Britain.

The city's literary heritage stretches back to Sir Philip Sidney and Mary, Countess of Pembroke in the late 16th century and on through Michael Drayton, George Herbert, Samuel Pepys, Henry Fielding, William Hazlitt, Anthony Trollope, E.M. Forster, Edward Thomas, William Golding and David Gascoyne to the present day.

On this tour we will visit the landmarks, sites and locations associated with this extraordinary confluence of place, spirit and identity, making connections between the past and present. The tour will include:

• The City and its historic buildings
• Harnham Bridge and Mill
• Salisbury Cathedral and The Close
• Winterslow and St Andrews, Bemerton
• Wilton House and Gardens
• Figsbury Rings and Stonehenge

The diarist Samuel Pepys visited Salisbury on the 10th - 12th June 1668 ‘guided all over the Plain by the sight of the steeple’ of the cathedral and stayed at the George Inn, ‘where lay in silk bed; and very good diet’, on his way to Stonehenge. Read more ...

We will have an audio-visual presentation on the history of Salisbury at the Medieval Hall, and visit Mompesson House.

Day 2
features a tour of Salisbury Cathedral and a circular walk to Harnham Bridge, associated with Anthony Trollope, Edward Thomas and William Golding.

At Harnham Mill we will be able to look back over the meadows and enjoy the view of the Cathedral as painted by Constable.

Harnham Bridge and Mill
In his Autobiography (1883) Anthony Trollope recalled how when ‘wandering one midsummer evening round the purlieus of Salisbury Cathedral’, he ‘conceived the story of The Warden, from whence came the series of novels of which Barchester … was the central site…’. Read more ...

Day 3
Today we will visit the iron age hill fort of Figsbury Rings, where E.M.Forster’s view of landscape and the natural world was transformed, and then travel on to the Pheasant Hotel, Winterslow, where one of England’s greatest essayists wrote much of his work. Rudyard Kipling also visited this hotel.

Day 4
St Andrew's Church, Bemerton and Wilton House and Gardens

Our day starts with a visit to St Andrews Church, Bemerton, where the great metaphysical poet, George Herbert, spent the last three years of his life.

Then we'll go on to Wilton House and Gardens, the home of the Earl of Pembroke, where his ancestor, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621), ran a famous literary salon after the death of her brother, Sir Philip Sidney.

Mary Herbert was patron to many poets, including Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Samuel Daniel, Ben Jonson, John Donne and Michael Drayton.

Between 1578 and 1582 her brother, Sir Philip Sidney, was a frequent visitor, and wrote much of his major work whilst at Wilton House:

• The Arcadia, an account of two princes and their adventures in love and combat
• Astrophil and Stella, an analysis of love and desire, and
• A Defence of Poetry, which defends poetry as the highest art and the equal of Nature under God

Under Mary’s leadership, Wilton House became a college of learning, poetry and alchemy. It was the spiritual centre of the Sidney-Spenser movement in English poetry, with many links with the poets and writers associated with the Mermaid Tavern in London. Sir Walter Ralegh’s half-brother, Adrian Gilbert, was her resident advisor.

Both Elizabeth I and Charles I visited Wilton House and it was here in 1603 that William Shakespeare, encouraged by Mary’s son, William, the third Earl, visited to see As You Like It performed before King James I.

Day 5
Old Sarum and Stonehenge

Stonehenge has been an integral part of literary pilgrimages to the area since the sixteenth century, accounts of visits to Stonehenge date back to 1562. Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser both refer to Stonehenge in their poetry. Herbert, Pepys, Fielding, Hazlitt, Forster, Thomas and Golding all were drawn to the standing stones.

Pepys went ‘over the plain and some prodigious great hills, even to fright us. Came thither, and find them as prodigious as any tales I ever heard of them, and worth going this journey to see’.

Virginia Woolf, who stayed at Netherhampton House, Wilton in 1903, noted their ‘singular and intoxicating charm’.

Thomas Hardy used what he called the monoliths of ‘The Temple of the Winds’ to light up the figure of Tess Durbeyfield asleep on the sacrificial stone in Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891).