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Salisbury, Wilts - Clarendon Palace
12th century
An important royal palace throughout the
Middle Ages but now little more than an overgrown site. Notes in
italics from Wiltshire by Nikolaus Pevsner
Revised by Bridget Cherry (1975) Yale University Press, New Haven
and London.
Click on photos to enlarge
Clarendon appears in a document as a
military gathering-place as early as the 1070s. By 1130 or earlier
it must have been a royal habitation. Henry II and then Henry III
made it into a palace - a palace, not a castle; for even at the time
of its greatest extension it was not fortified. ..... The palace was
much in use throughout the C14 and to the later C15. What remained
in the C18 was engraved by Stukeley in 1723. In the C20 nearly all
was gone or smothered in trees and undergrowth In 1933
Professor Tancred Borenius began excavations, and these were
continued to just before the Second World War. ... (Pevsner goes
on to outline the various parts of the palace as discovered in the
excavations). ... The war and the
death of Professor Borenius cut excavations short, and today
Clarendon is a tragedy. ... One crag of wall stands up. All the rest
is back to its sleeping beauty. Surely, out of respect for English
history if for no other reason, these remains ought to be as clearly
visible as those of Old Sarum.
However, some conservation and improvement
work is now taking place under a 5-year plan (2000-2005). See details
at King Alfred's College website.
Some historical associations:
Perhaps most significantly, the Constitutions
of Clarendon, which have been described as England's first
constitution. Promulgated here by King Henry II in 1164 as a
definition of church-state relations in England, they provoked the
quarrel between the king and his archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas
Becket. The text can be read here.
Under King Edward III, two kings
were held captive here - David, king of Scotland, and John, king of
France. King Henry VI
had his first onset of insanity here in 1453.
Map
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