Historical Builder › Cathedrals › Salisbury Cathedral
How Long Did It Take to Build Salisbury Cathedral?
Short answer: about 38 years, from 1220 to 1258.
Bishop Poore is said to have picked the site by shooting an arrow from Old Sarum. It hit a deer, which ran on and died where the cathedral stands. Old Sarum is over 3 km away.
What the sources say about the building period
Foundation stone 1220; main body completed 1220–1258; cloister, chapter house, tower and spire followed (spire c. 1320). University of Notre Dame, Architecture Library Secondary source
Stone and crew in numbers
- Country and type
- England, cathedral
- Stone in the walls
- 35,000 to 60,000 m³ Estimate
- For comparison
- about 19 Olympic pools of stone, or 4,750 truckloads
- Average crew
- about 149 workers (model value: the crew that would need exactly this long, working without a break)
Volume basis: 135 m long; nave about 70 m; tower and spire added about 6,000 t. Checked against measurements. Our estimates come from published dimensions and are shown as a range. The result is a simple model, not a measured fact.
Where the stone came from
Creamy Chilmark limestone from quarries around Chilmark and Tisbury in Wiltshire, with dark Purbeck 'marble' from Dorset for the slender columns. Bath Geological Society: Salisbury Cathedral rocks (2012), Wikipedia: Chilmark Quarries Secondary source
Plan
Legend: tradition, not evidence
Bishop Poore chose the site by shooting an arrow from Old Sarum. It hit a deer, which ran on and died where the cathedral now stands.
What we know: The distance from Old Sarum is over 3 km, so the shot is impossible. One scholar argues the marshy site was chosen because a preferred site further west could not be obtained.
Wikipedia: Salisbury Cathedral Tradition, not evidence
Build it yourself
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More cathedrals
- Canterbury Cathedral (England)
- York Minster (England)
- Notre-Dame de Paris (France)
- Chartres Cathedral (France)