Historic Places in Wiltshire

Salisbury Cathedral is the finest example of Early English Gothic architecture in Britain and one of the most beautiful medieval buildings in the world, a cathedral built almost entirely in a single phase between 1220 and 1320 that gives it an architectural coherence and purity of style unmatched by any other English cathedral. The spire, at 123 metres the tallest in Britain, was added in the mid-fourteenth century to create the most recognisable and most celebrated cathedral silhouette in England, the image that Constable painted repeatedly and that has defined the identity of Salisbury and its surrounding water meadows ever since. The building was constructed with remarkable speed for a medieval cathedral, most of the structure completed within less than forty years, and the consistency of the Early English Gothic style throughout the nave, choir, transepts and lady chapel reflects the continuity of vision achieved by building so quickly. The white Chilmark limestone of the exterior and the grey Purbeck marble of the interior columns create a colour scheme of cool elegance entirely appropriate to the Early English aesthetic of sharp mouldings, lancet windows and restrained ornament. The cathedral's Chapter House contains one of only four surviving original copies of Magna Carta, the 1215 document limiting the power of the monarchy and establishing the principle of the rule of law that was one of the foundations of English constitutional development. The copy at Salisbury is in excellent condition and its display in the cathedral provides one of the most direct connections available in Britain between an accessible historic building and a document of world-historical significance. The Cathedral Close, the largest in England, contains a collection of historic buildings including the Mompesson House, managed by the National Trust, and provides one of the finest examples of a complete medieval cathedral precinct surviving in England.

Stourhead in Wiltshire is one of the most complete and perfectly preserved examples of the English landscape garden tradition, a composition of water, trees, classical temples and carefully engineered viewpoints created in the 1740s by the banker Henry Hoare II that has been widely regarded as a masterpiece of the Georgian pleasure ground since its creation. The garden surrounds a central lake formed by damming the River Stour, and the walk around the lake passes through a sequence of scenes composed to suggest an idealised version of the classical landscapes painted by Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin that Hoare had studied during his Grand Tour of Italy. The design principle is one of deliberate visual narrative. As you walk the lakeside circuit, each turn reveals a new composition: the Pantheon reflected in the lake, the Temple of Apollo on the ridge above, the Palladian Bridge crossing an inlet, the grotto and its reclining river god beneath the cliff. Each view was calculated to suggest a particular mood or literary reference, and the sequence of spaces creates an experience more like moving through a painted landscape than walking in a garden in any conventional sense. The classical buildings are an essential element of the composition. The Pantheon, modelled on the Roman original, serves as a focal point for views from multiple points around the lake. The Temple of Flora, the Temple of Apollo, the Bristol Cross brought from the city and re-erected as a garden feature, and the Gothic Cottage all contribute to a landscape that seamlessly combines different architectural traditions in service of an overall aesthetic rather than historical coherence. Autumn is the most celebrated season at Stourhead, when the collection of North American trees planted by later generations of the Hoare family colours the landscape with the full range of maple and liquidambar reds and golds reflected in the lake. Spring is equally spectacular when the azaleas and rhododendrons flower in sheets of colour among the mature trees. Stourhead House itself, a Palladian villa built in the 1720s, contains fine collections of furniture and art and is included in the National Trust admission. The village of Stourton adjacent to the estate provides a pub and a picturesque church that adds English vernacular character to the classical and Romantic landscape of the garden.