The city of Salisbury was built together with the cathedral in the early part of the thirteenth century, shortly after the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome and the signing of Magna Carta in England. This book describes how the bishop and his chapter took advantage of this extraordinary opportunity. The author argues that the political turmoil which affected the development of Old Sarum was replaced at Salisbury by a sacramental vision superimposing ideas of movement and time over a static, partly geometric order. The most significant occasions used by the clergy to reveal this tension were the Rogation processions around Ascension Day which seem to have left an imprint on the layout of the city. The study goes on to suggest that participation in the processions - inside the cathedral and the city - brought past, present and future together in one experience which linked normal time with the foundation of Salisbury as well as the hope associated with the Second Coming. This observation not only offers new insights into the concerns of urban Christianity in the first half of the thirteenth century but also points to an alternative way of looking at gothic architecture based around movement.

Archaeological excavation, architectural survey and historical research carried out between 1978 and 1993 have elucidated the origins and early development of Wells Cathedral. Study concentrated primarily on the cloister and its adjuncts, and excavation took place in the adjoining ‘Camery’ garden. Here lay an ancient cemetery and the foundations of a succession of demolished buildings, ranging in date from Roman to post-medieval. Collectively, these enshrined a continuous development of religious and sepulchral activity, probably from the fourth to the mid-sixteenth century; secular uses followed. Adjacent to the Camery are the springs from which Wells takes its name. The first mention of the ‘holy well’ and minster church of St Andrew is in A.D. 766. Excavation yielded a complex stratigraphic sequence, demonstrating how an anonymous late Roman mausoleum burial probably provided the raison d’être for the development of a Middle Saxon cemetery and chapel, and hence for the origins of Wells Cathedral itself in 909. The establishment of this sequence is uniquely important in the history of English cathedral archaeology and sets Wells alongside developments in continental Europe.