Caersallog, where tawny owls "too-wit too-woo".

I have a photo taken 65 years ago of two young brothers, looking in awe through a grand gothic entrance to a cathedral. Inside all is darkness. The city, Caersallog, has been with me most of my life, and during my father’s too. During the war that followed that “war to end all wars” (but spawned countless since, continuing to this day), he had been evacuated to a family in the west, on the outskirts of Caersallog. He had his final schooling there before returning home to join the Portsmouth Home Guard for a short time before the war ended.

His short time in “exile” clearly left a powerful impression, and he always wanted to return. He was able to spend the final six years of his retirement nearby. Visiting as a child and as an adult, the area had a huge impact on me too, whether from its famed water meadows, well-known local characters or unspoilt rustic rambles accompanied by the duetting “too-wit too-woo” of a pair of Tawny Owls. Above all, there is a feeling of Hiraeth, as if the very soil exudes a palpable connection to its ancient history.  

On a clear crisp December morning in 1994, the two boys, now balding and bearding, took their father’s ashes to be deposited, in accordance with his wishes, on the ramparts of the old fort of Hen Sallog. At that very moment, with not a cloud to be seen, there was a single unmistakable clap of thunder. It was simultaneously spooky and comforting.

Dating back perhaps five millennia, later an Iron Age fort, then Roman, it was known as Hen Sallog (Old Sarum) until the “British” were displaced by the Saxons in 522 CE.  I claim no archaeological or linguistic expertise, but suffice to say the connections are complex. What became a cathedral city was moved a couple of miles south to Sallog Newydd (New Sarum) in the 13th Century. The new city, called Caersallog in Cymraeg, is commonly known as Salisbury*. The name Sallog (Sarum) seems to derive from a Romano-Celtic leader in the first century. Sallog later moved to what is now Caerdydd, only two hours away by train today. Rather longer by Roman road then. Tangentially, two thousand years later, Caersallog happened to have been the birthplace of well known “Welsh” actor John Rhys-Davies: neither here nor there of course. Literally.

There is an image that regularly reminds me of a small town, two miles west from Caersallog. I was starting to write a rather lavatorial blog in response to the photo, but one Adrian Chiles beat me to it. Wherever I visit across the nations, to “pay a visit”, I find I am using a Wallgate hand-washing installation. You’ve seen them too. The telephone code (01722) is instantly familiar to me, and the manufacturer has been in Wilton for two centuries, the town where my parents spent their final years.  

Hiraeth (above) is often associated with poet RS Thomas, who searched in vain for the mythical village of Abercuawg (“where the cuckoos sing”) referred to in medieval poetry. An idyllic place that no longer exists, if it ever did at all. Maybe, like Abercuawg, my Caersallog now exists only in the imagination. Where my father stills sups a pint of whatever Wilfred in the corner is having, and my mother asks for a drink not too large, not too small, and settles for a barley wine. Fittingly, their "local" is no longer a pub, having become a shop selling memories (antiques).

Footnote *

Caer=Fortress/Burgh/Bury

Sallog=Salis/Sarum (Latinised)

Hen Sallog=Old Sarum

Sallog Newydd=New Sarum=Salisbury

LINKS

Caersallog - Wicipedia (wikipedia.org)

St Eurgain | Pilgrim (wordpress.com)

cuckoos sing in the sunlit uplands (cambriancrumbs.blogspot.com)

Salisbury - Wikipedia

Decades on, I am still traumatised by my visit to the school toilets | Life and style | The Guardian

Our History - Commercial Washrooms - Anti-ligature Sanitaryware | Wallgate