Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [2]
Salisbury street names have also changed over time; but generally I have chosen not to confuse the reader with this information.
Otherwise places in the text – Salisbury, Christchurch. Wilton, Old Sarum – are as described.
Family names and origins
Of the fictional families in the story – Wilson, Mason and Godfrey are all common names which may be found in almost any English town. The derivations given in the story for the first two are those normally given; the derivation for the Godfreys of Avonsford is invented, but typical of one way in which names were derived from Norman originals.
There was, as it happens, a real Godfrey in Salisbury some centuries ago who became a mayor of the town and his family, with its different origin, makes a brief appearance in our story, and is clearly distinguished from the fictional family.
Shockley is a rarer name and the derivation I have given is likely.
As for the derivation of the much rarer name of Barnikel, this belongs to English folklore, but I like to believe it. The name Porteus is found more usually in the north – often Porteous. Its Roman derivation is invented. Names do not, unfortunately, go back so far.
But families do. In recent decades, historians and archaeologists seem to have discovered increasing evidence of continuity of occupation in many areas of England. While it is generally true that the Saxon Settlement tended to push the British people westward, there is no reason to suppose that none remained where they were. The idea that there may be people in the Sarum area today whose bloodlines go back to the occupants of the region in Celtic or pre-Celtic times cannot be proved, but is not entirely fanciful.
The Dune
I have deliberately chosen to use the modern and familiar term dune for the hillfort of Old Sarum. Properly this should be written dün.
Summary
No place in England, I believe, has a longer visible history of building and occupation than the Sarum region. The wealth of archaeological information, let alone historical record is so overwhelming that even a novelist, wishing to convey anything near the full story of the place would have to write a book three or four times as long as I have done.
Faced with such an embarrassment of riches, the author can only make a personal selection and hope that in doing so, he may have conveyed something of the wonder of the place.
This book is dedicated to those who built and to those who are now trying to save Salisbury Spire
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Also by Edward Rutherfurd
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Preface
Maps
Family Trees
Dedication
Old Sarum
Journey to Sarum
The Barrow
The Henge
Sorviodunum
Twilight
The Two Rivers
The Castle
New Sarum
The Founding
The Death
The Rose
A Journey From Sarum
New World
The Unrest
The Calm
Boney
Empire
The Henge II
The Encampment
The Spire
Old Sarum
JOURNEY TO SARUM
First, before the beginning of Sarum, came a time when the world was a colder and darker place.
Over a huge area of the northern hemisphere – perhaps a sixth of the whole globe – stretched a mighty covering of ice. It lay over all of northern Asia; it covered Canada, Scandinavia and about two thirds of the future land of Britain. Had it been possible to cross this gigantic continent of ice, the journey would have been some five thousand miles from whichever direction it was approached. The volume of the ice was stupendous; even at its outer edge it was thirty feet high.
In a desolate, dark belt to the south of the ice lay a vast subarctic wasteland of empty tundra, several hundred miles across.
This was the colder, darker world, some twenty thousand years before the birth of Christ.
Since the huge casing of ice contained a considerable portion of the earth’s water, the seas were lower than those in later times – some did not exist at all – and so the lands to the south stood higher, their sheer cliffs frowning upon empty chasms