Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [1]
I have also been most fortunate in finding an agent, Gill Coleridge of Anthony Sheil Associates and two editors, Rosie Cheetham of Century Hutchinson and Betty Prashker of Crown Publishers who early on had faith in this project and gave me such unfailing help and encouragement.
I am deeply grateful to my wife Susan, my mother and the Hon. Diana Makgill for their respective patience, unstinting help and hospitality.
Special thanks are also due to Miss Alison Borthwick for her expert maps and illustrations.
Finally, and most important of all, I owe the greatest possible debt of gratitude to Dr John Chandler whose book, Endless Street opened the doors of Salisbury’s history to me and has been my constant companion. For over three years, with unfailing patience and courtesy he has guided me towards my objective, and without his kind help and expert advice this book could not have been written.
PREFACE
The name Sarum
The word Sarum is, strictly speaking, an inaccurate rendering of the abbreviation used by medieval scribes when they wished to write the name of the place called Salisbury.
But having misread the scribal hand, men found the name pleasing; and the term Sarum has been used in writing and probably in speech for seven hundred and fifty years, to describe the town, the diocese and the area of Salisbury.
For purposes of clarity, I have chosen throughout this novel to apply the term Sarum to the immediate area around the city. When describing the individual settlements or towns on the site, I have used the names they carried at the time reached in the narrative – Sorviodunum in Roman times, Sarisberie in Norman, and Salisbury thereafter. Old Sarum is the proper name of the original town and is used as such in context.
The novel Sarum
Sarum is a novel and to see it as anything else would be a mistake.
All the families of Porteus, Wilson, Shockley, Mason, Godfrey, Moody, Barnikel are fictitious as are, therefore, their individual parts in all events described.
But in following the story of these imaginary families down the centuries I have tried, insofar as is possible, to set them amongst people and events that either did exist, or might have done.
In the prehistoric chapters I have felt free to choose dates and telescope developments somewhat, but under advice from those experts who have so kindly assisted me.
However, the reader may care to note that the date of the separation of the island of Britain from the European mainland is usually set somewhere between 9,000 and 6,000 B.C.
Of the religious, astronomical and building practices at Stonehenge nothing can be said with certainty and I have felt free to make my own selection from the many theories suggested.
There and elsewhere I have also placed in the text, from time to time, items of historical information which may help to orientate the reader who is not intimately familiar with English history. These are not, and make no pretence to being a detailed historical account. They are merely signposts.
Topography and Avonsford
There are so many villages, hillforts, and other natural features around Sarum, that in order to avoid a bewildering confusion of settings, I have found it necessary to make one alteration to the landscape. The village of Avonsford does not exist. It is an amalgam of places and buildings drawn from all over the area and I have sited it – somewhere – in the valley of the river Avon that lies to the north of Salisbury and which I have chosen to call, for purposes of narrative convenience, the Avon valley. It may be of interest that the following features, in particular, which I have sited at Avonsford all exist, or have existed, within a few miles radius of Salisbury: an iron age farm, a Roman villa, fields called Paradise and Purgatory, the miz-maze, earthwork enclosures, dewponds, fulling mills, dovecotes, manor houses as detailed, churches with box pews.
Where other local places have had different names at different periods, I have chosen the most familiar – as in the