PEPYS AT OLD SARUM 191 



other circumstances, be unduly extending the scope 

 of this work to travel so far from the highway, we 

 need have no compunction in making this trip, for 

 it brings us to one of the most interesting places on 

 the Amesbury and Ilminster route to Exeter — to 

 Stonehenge, in fact, and passes by the wonderful 

 terraced hill of Old Sarum. You can see Old Sarum 

 looming ahead immediately after j)assing the outlying 

 houses of Salisbury, and if you come upon it when 

 a storm is impending, as in Constal)le's picture, the 

 impression of size and strength created is one not 

 soon to be forgotten. As to coming upon it in the 

 dark, as Pepys did, the sight is awe-inspiring. 



Time and place conspired to frighten him. 'So 

 over the Plain,' he says, ' by the sight of the steeple, 

 to Salisluiry by night; but before I came to the town, 

 I saw a great fortification, and there alighted, and 

 to it, and in it ; and find it prodigious, so as to fright 

 me to be in it all alone at that time of nio-ht, it being; 

 dark. I understand since it to l)e that that is called 

 Old Sarum.' 



To climl) the steep grassy ramparts, one after the 

 other, and to descend into and climb out of the suc- 

 cessive yawning ditches is a tiring exercise, l)ut per- 

 haps in no other way is it possible to gain anything 

 like a proper idea of the strength of the place. Nor 

 is there any more sure way of arriving at the relative 

 scale of it than Ijy observing the stray cyclist stand- 

 ing on the topmost ramparts and gazing toward the 

 distant spire of Salisbury, 



There are other things than ancient history that 

 make Old Sarum memorable. It was the head and 



