Old Sarum Castle
Old Sarum is a dramatic hilltop site near Salisbury in Wiltshire combining an Iron Age hillfort, a Norman castle, a Norman cathedral and the ghost of a medieval city within a single extraordinary monument. The site was occupied continuously from the Iron Age through the Norman period and into the medieval town that eventually decamped to New Sarum, the present city of Salisbury, leaving Old Sarum as a deserted hilltop of extraordinary archaeological and historical interest. The Norman castle on the central motte and the foundations of the first Salisbury Cathedral, replaced by the present cathedral in the valley below, can be explored within the large earthwork enclosure. Old Sarum was also the most notorious of England's rotten boroughs, returning two MPs to Parliament despite having virtually no inhabitants, until the Reform Act of 1832. Managed by English Heritage, the site provides exceptional views over the Wiltshire downs.