Salisbury

Salisbury was a new town, laid out on a grid at "Myrifield", a meadow near where the Nadder meets the Avon. Bishop Richard Poore moved the cathedral there from the hilltop of Old Sarum in 1220, and the foundation stones were laid on 28 April 1220. The nave was finished by 1258, the cloisters were added in 1240 and the chapter house in 1263. Its spire, completed by 1330, stood at 123 metres as the highest masonry spire in England. Henry III chartered the settlement as the city of New Sarum in 1227, and by the fourteenth century it was the largest settlement in Wiltshire; a wall was built round the Close with stones taken from Old Sarum.

The English Parliament met at New Sarum in 1324, 1328 and 1384. The market place had four crosses in the fifteenth century, including the Poultry Cross, and the city held charter markets on Tuesdays and Saturdays. In 1450, while Jack Cade rebelled in London, riots in Salisbury ended with the murder of Bishop William Ayscough, and the city's cloth trade was in decline. A rebellion against Richard III broke out in 1483.