By N. Story Maskelyne, Esq., U.P. 185 
Old Sarum stands. Perhaps the Gaul would have had a hand, if not 
in originally carving out its deep trenches, at least in deepening and 
strengthening them. It is, however, impossible to say what amount of 
this defensive work came from the hands of Gael or Gaul or Saxon. 
The Romans next held Old Sarum, and when in 534 Cynric, the 
son of Cerdic, became leader of the West Saxons, the Sorbiodunum 
of the Romans was in the resolute hands of the more or less 
Romanised Britons of Belgie race. 
After the battle of Charford (Cerdices ford) in 519 the Saxon 
advance had been held in check in no small degree by the formidable 
front the Britons showed them in the fortresses they held on the 
chalk country, of which Old Sarum was the centre and key. Bury 
Hill and Quarley guarded the upper waters of the Teste. Old 
Sarum (Sorbio-dunum) barred the way up the Avon. A group of 
strong hill-forts round Warminster and others between it and that 
fortress were centres of a population ready to join a muster anywhere 
on Salisbury Plain; and behind Old Sarum again to the north were 
Sidbury, Ambresbury, Chisbury, and, beyond the Vale of Pewsey, 
an old British entrenchment at Martinzell, with, further north, 
Cunetio (near Marlborough) and Barbury, and Oldbury—all so 
situated as to be able to signal each to the next, and so to pass on 
the summons for a muster against the common enemy. In 552 
Cynric burst through the barrier; he fought a battle near the fort 
of Searo Byrig, and in the terse language of the old chronicle, “ the 
Bryts he put to flight.” With the intermissions due to two great 
waves of Danish conquest, Searo-burh thenceforward continued a 
Saxon fortress through the remainder of early English history, Alfred 
himself having, according to tradition, occupied and strengthened its 
defences. And next, when the Normans ruled the land, a Norman 
castle rose within its ramparts, and the lofty mound or durh raised 
by the Saxon was crowned with a Norman keep. But keep and 
castle, like the cathedral and the town that once were cooped within 
the mounds of Sarum, are gone; the very stones of whatever existed 
there as masonry have been removed, and Old Sarum has remained 
a turfy solitude for nearly seven centuries. But it sent two members 
to Parliament till 1832. Such is the history of Old Sarum. 
