Salisbury

Salisbury (Sarum). Cathedral city in Wiltshire. It originated with an Iron Age hill-fort which housed successively a Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman town. In the 1070s it acquired a cathedral, which in the 12th cent. was a major intellectual centre. In 1219 the bishop moved to a new, level site 1" miles south; a large cathedral was built in uniform style c.1220-1320, its tower crowned by the tallest surviving medieval spire in Europe. The city flourished through the cloth industry, becoming the fourth largest English town in the 15th cent.