Old Sarum Cathedral

Only its foundations remain, in the north-west quadrant of the circular outer bailey of the site, about 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the centre of modern Salisbury, Wiltshire, in the United Kingdom.

The cathedral was the seat of the bishops of Salisbury during the early Norman period and the original source of the Sarum Rite.

Built in the standard cruciform shape, the building had a nave of seven bays with cross-shaped piers, an apse and a central crossing tower, as well as several peripheral chapels.

[2] During the Norman conquest of England following his 1066 victory at Hastings, King William I used Old Sarum (known at the time by variants of "Saresbury" or "Salisbury") as a base of operations.

(Herman's initial choice for his seat had been at Malmesbury, but this plan had been blocked by the local monks and Earl Godwin.

A dispute between King Stephen and Henry, bishop of Winchester and the papal legate in England, left the see vacant for three years before the consecration of Josceline de Bohon.

[12] Around the same time, the central apse was developed into a single-story chapel while the altar and reliquary were moved into the chancel.

[18] The 12th-century Peter of Blois had described the old church site as "barren, dry, and solitary, exposed to the rage of the wind" and the cathedral itself as "a captive on the hill where it was built, like the ark of God shut up in the profane house of Baal.

Herbert eventually befriended King John[citation needed] but was unable to accomplish much in the chaos surrounding his reign.

The project's director, William Henry St John Hope, died in 1919 without formally publishing any findings.