LIES two miles from Salisbury, and stands up, making a bold outline in the surrounding open country. It is a hill, bare now, save for some trees, encircled with entrenchments, with a central mound peering above them. But centuries ago this spot was crowded with buildings—religious, military, and domestic, and was one of the most important in our island. Some say that the ancient British name was _Caer Sarflag_, the “City of the Service Tree.” Its Roman name was _Sorbiodunun_, the Saxon _Sarobyrig_. The face of the hill is smooth and very steep. The summit is fenced by a mighty earthen rampart and ditch, protected by a lower raised bank outside of it, the height from the top of the one to the bottom of the other being 106 feet. The surface of the hill is an elongated circular area of 27½ acres. In the centre of the area is a second circular earthwork and ditch 100 feet high, and within these stood the citadel. On the top of the earthwork surrounding the citadel was a very strong wall 12 feet thick, of flint embedded in rubble, and coated with square stones, of which some portion remain. To the great outer earthwork there were two entrances—one (guarded by a hornwork still remaining) on the western, another (the postern) on the eastern side. The site of the citadel is now overgrown with briers and brushwood; the rest of the area is partly in a state of nature, partly cultivated. “Celt and Roman alike had seen the military value of the height from which the eye sweeps nowadays over the grassy meadows of the Avon to the arrowy spire of Salisbury; and, admirable as the position was in itself, it had been strengthened at a vast cost of labour. The camp on the summit of the knoll was girt in by a trench hewn so deeply in the chalk that, from the inner side of it, the white face of the rampart rose 100 feet high, while strong outworks protected the approaches to the fortress from the west and from the east.”