History according to Salisbury's Plaques

For the purpose of this website, the definition of a plaque is a textual memorial. However, in one or two cases, memorials which are purely pictorial have been included, thus Salisbury is very rich in plaques.

This website concentrates on the area of Salisbury which includes the railway station, the bus station, the market place, the Cathedral, Fisherton Street and Castle Street. Date information has been taken from the plaques and arranged here in a table in chronological order. This gives an interesting Salisbury view of history. For example John Halle's famous house was completed in the year that the Duke of Buckingham was executed!

If you click on the plaque number at the end of any row in this table, you obtain further details and photographs. Not all plaques contain dates so do not appear in the table. The whereabouts of plaques is also illustrated in the map found below the table. To see thumbnails of the plaques click here.

If you have any comments relating to this website, please click here Plaque Webmaster

Click on any of the section titles below to go straight there.

Section 1: Plaque history by date
Section 2: Location of Plaques
Section 3: Viewing the Plaques
Section 4: Plaque Thumbnails
Section 5: A Plaque Walk
Section 6: Plaque details via Plaque Number
Section 7: Future Plaques
Section 8: Links to other Web Sites

Plaque history by date

Location of Plaques

Hover over a numbered blue square on the map below with your cursor to see the short name for the plaque.
Click on a blue square on the map to open up a new web page describing the plaque(s) found in that location.
There are a number of locations where there are a number of plaques close together.
Thus on the map in these locations there is only one blue square for a number of plaques.

Viewing the Plaques

Whilst walking around Salisbury, you will have to look carefully to find all the plaques. For example one set of text is on the top (roof?) of the Market Place Guildhall. It can be seen by looking up towards the Guildhall from the market place war memorial. The text has been renewed in gold not many years ago but you will probably still need binoculars or a good camera to be able to read the text clearly.

Some plaques are inside buildings. The Market Place Guildhall has some magnificent plaques inside, including the one commemorating Princess Diana's visit. The Military Museum in the Cathedral Close has a number of plaques on the wall of its memorial garden grounds. These can usually only be accessed by visiting the Military Museum. The plaque to John Halle is just inside the cinema in New Canal. This can be viewed without payment if the cinema is open. The plaque on the Poultry Cross is to be found well camouflaged on the central support.

A GPS Garmin has been used to determine 5 figure values for the Eastings and Northings using the British National Grid as used by Ordnance Survey. These values are not always as accurate as their precision due to the obscuration of the satellites by buildings and trees.

Plaque Thumbnails

Thumbnails are miniature pictures. To see thumbnails of all the plaques click here.
To get back to this current page you will need to use the 'back' on your browser.

A Plaque Walk

Information has been extracted from this website and made into a leaflet.
A copy of this leaflet can be downloaded here either in Microsoft WORD or in pdf format.
Click here for Microsoft WORD version (0.9 megabytes).
Click here for pdf version (5.3 megabytes).
If you have the skills and facilities, you can then print the 8 pages on your own colour printer on two double-sided A4 sheets with two pages per side, short edge binding in page order 8,1,2,7,6,3,4,5. The A4 sheets can be put together and folded in half to make the A5 leaflet. Armed with this leaflet you can then walk around our beautiful city, and see how many of the plaques you can find, and learn some of the history of Salisbury. This leaflet contains a plaque map and a date table. Plan a route and use the date table to tick off the plaques you discover.
As an alternative to printing, you could view the leaflet on your iPhone or such.
To do so click here.

Plaque details via Plaque Number

As you will already have gathered, every plaque has been given a number. If you know the plaque number you are interested in, then this grid here will give you a quick access to it. Simply click on the number within the grid.
Note numbers 9,10,12,32,58,63,66,68,70,71,72,104-110 are not currently in use.

Future Plaques

The webmaster welcomes proposals for plaques. There are no absolute rules but if it is to celebrate the life of a person it is preferred that the person should have been deceased for a number of years. The Plaques Webmaster is very much biased to plaques being placed within Salisbury and keen that the plaques should be able to be seen by the public, not internal to a building. Plaque suggestions are dealt with and if not proceeded with for some reason at the time, they have a tendency to end up lost in history. It is intended now to try and keep a record of all plaque suggestions on this website. When a suggestion is proceeded with and a plaque is unveiled, then its suggestion will be removed from here and the information become a full instance in the main website. Having a full list here means that the suggestions can always be easily reviewed, even years later. It also means that information can be added here to any plaque suggestion and maybe over a number of years sufficient evidence will accumulated to warrant a change of decision in a particular case and for that plaque to go ahead.

Plaque Suggestions

To make a suggestion for a future plaque, please email by clicking here Plaque Webmaster.

Cartoon originally published in Saga Magazine and provided courtesy of Ian Baker 10/01/2011

Tom Adlam (1893-1975) - Salisbury's only Victoria Cross won during WWI. A plaque might be placed on the Adlam Buildings in Rectory Road, and not on Bishop Wordsworth’s school. He came from Salisbury, was educated here, and ran a business in the city. He lived in a house in Waterloo Road.
William Barnes (1800-1886) - Poet. Schoolmaster in Mere 1823 - 1835.
Fred Bath (1847-1919) - Architect, best known for Hillcote in Manor Road, Salisbury, built in 1896, and the 1881 façade to the Odeon cinema. Born and died in Salisbury.
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE (14 January 1904–18 January 1980) - He was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. Between 1930 and 1945 he leased Ashcombe House in Wiltshire. In 1948 he bought Reddish House in Broadchalke. He died at the house in 1980 and is buried in Broadchalke churchyard.
Dorothy Brooke (1st June 1883-10th June 1955) - Dorothy Brooke, born in Salisbury, was the founder of the Brooke Hospital for Horses in Cairo. She at one time lived in Malmesbury House in The Close.
Theodore Brown (1870-1938) - A lifelong experimenter in optical entertainments such as stereo pictures, pop up books, cinematography, 3D movies, jigsaw puzzles. He was editor of Optical Lantern and Cinematography Journal. This was a request from the developers of the site between Devizes Road and Wilton Road, to put up a plaque to Theodore Brown. He lived in a house on the site at the junction of Devizes Road and Wilton Road.
Sidney C Chick (?-1906) - The fireman on the stationary train when the express crashed into it in the 1906 Salisbury Train Disaster. In spite of being badly burnt he managed to walk to the Infirmary, but died from his injuries. It was suggested that the plaque be placed on Platform 6 at Salisbury railway station, the site of the accident. The plaque should be a memorial to all 28 who died in the crash. Interested railway groups should be invited to the unveiling ceremony.
Sir Cecil Chubb (1879-1934) - Chairman of the Old Manor Hospital in Wilton Rd when it became the largest private mental hospital in Europe. A plaque in the hospital commemorates his life and work. He bought Stonehenge in 1915 and gave it to the nation in 1918. His house in Shrewton is plaqued.
John Creasey (1908-1973) - Extremely prolific author, mainly of crime novels, under a variety of pseudonyms. He lived and died in the house that is now New Hall Hospital in Bodenham.
Sir Anthony Eden (1897-1977) - UK Foreign Secretary 1935 - 1938, 1940 - 1945 and 1951 - 1955, Prime Minister 1955 - 1957. On retiring from politics he moved to Broadchalke and was buried in Alvediston.
William Corbin Finch (?-1867) - In 1813 The Corbin Finch family opened Fisherton House Asylum (Old Manor Hospital) for business.
Wolfe Frank (1913-1988) - Resistance worker, Nazi hunter and pioneer of simultaneous translation as Chief Interpreter at the Nuremberg War Trials. He lived in the Malt House in Castle Street, Mere, for the final years of his life, which ended in suicide.
Admiral “Blinker” Hall (28th June 1870-1943) - As head of naval intelligence in World War I, his team anticipated World War II’s Bletchley Park with highly effective code-breaking and radio intercepts. He is thought to have been born in the Close or in Britford.
James Harris (1709-1886) - Harris was a classical scholar, politician, and writer on philology and philosophy. His principal work Hermes, or A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar, was published in 1751. From the day he entered Parliament in 1760 as MP for Christchurch he kept a journal of the debates there, and the surviving portion is the most important source for debates in the Parliament of 1761. He was born and educated in Salisbury and from 1733 he lived by St Ann’s Gate. He was a great lover of music and a friend of Handel. He directed concerts and music festivals at Salisbury for nearly 50 years, and assembled several operas using music by other composers.
Henry Lamb (1883-1960) - Henry Lamb was one of the leading British figurative painters of the first part of the 20th century. After World War I he lived in Brook House in Coombe Bissett, where he played host to writers, artists and intellectuals, including Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman. He died in the Spire Nursing Home in Salisbury.
Henry Lawes (1595-1662) - Composer, principally of vocal music, also known for his incidental music to Comus, a masque by his friend, John Milton. Born in Dinton. Was a child chorister in Salisbury Cathedral 1602-1611.
William Lawes (1602-1645) - Composer, younger brother of Henry, noted for highly original instrumental music. Born in Salisbury.
Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge FRS (1851-1940) - Professor of Physics at University College, Liverpool, 1881-1900. Principal of the University of Birmingham, 1900-1919. President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1913-1914. Brother of Sir Richard Lodge. In 1877 he married Mary Fanny Alexander Marshall (d.1929). He was involved in the development of and holder of key patents for radio. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz' proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures, Lodge demonstrated an early radio wave detector he named the "coherer". He was born on 12th June 1851 at Penkhull, Stoke-on-Trent and died on 22nd August 1940 at Normanaton House, Wilsford-cum-Lake. He was educated at the University of London. He had two Siblings: Eleanor Constance Lodge and Alfred Lodge. He invented Lodge spark plugs. After his retirement in 1920, Lodge and his wife settled in Normanton House, near Lake in Wiltshire. Lodge and his wife are buried at his local parish church, St. Michael's, Wilsford cum Lake. Their eldest son Oliver W F Lodge and eldest daughter Violet are buried at the same church.
V S Naipaul (1932-2018) - Nobel prize winning writer, knighted in 1990. He moved to a bungalow in the grounds of Wilsford Manor in 1971, and subsequently to Dairy Cottage in Salterton. When he died at the age of 85 he left behind a challenging library of work which occupies a space between imagination, travel-writing and autobiography in an attempt to capture the complexities of the modern world.
Herbert Ponting (21st March 1870-1935) - Professional photographer, famous as the photographer and cinematographer for Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic (1910–1913). In this role, he captured some of the most enduring images of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, both as stills and as a classic film: "The great white silence". He was born in Oatmeal Row, Salisbury.
Alan Richardson (1923-2018) - He spearheaded a successful campaign in the mid-1980s to save the Salisbury Odeon from demolition. During his career he oversaw operations on many BBC shows, including Dad’s Army, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Morecambe and Wise. Alan was awarded France’s highest honour, the Legion d’Honneur, for his involvement during the landings on D-Day, when, as a 20-year-old First Lieutenant, he helped to deliver a deadly cargo of ammunition to the Normandy beaches. He was born in Catherine Street (where the rear entrance into the Odeon could be a great place for a plaque), and after he returned to Salisbury in 1976 he bought a house in New Street.
Frank Richardson (1871-1952) - Appointed Chief Constable of Salisbury City Police in 1903, a position he held until his retirement in 1929. He was in complete control of the 1919 Children's Peace Pageant in Salisbury. He was perhaps the first Chief Constable in England to appoint a woman as a constable, and was a pioneer in the use of horses for crowd control. He died in 257 Castle Road. He had two other residences in Salisbury before this as well.
Edward Seago (1910-1974) - A major british artist who was based at Wilton House and Old Sarum airfield during part of the war and was responsible for camouflage in the south. He learned to fly at Old Sarum. He also drank at the Haunch of Venison. For quite a lot of the time, and on occasions after the war, Seago rented Moat Cottage at Britford. It is still there, much extended, and was by 2013 a many starred holiday let.
In July 2014) there was a very big exhibition of Seago's work in the Portland Gallery, London. He died 19th January 1974. There was a memorial exhibition at Marlborough Fine Arts in December 1974. The late Queen Mother, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles have all been collectors of his work. He painted with the Duke of Edinburgh and accompanied him on a trip to Antarctica. He stayed at Sandringham most years where there was in July 2014 an exhibition of his work which is in royal ownership. Most of the royals visited his studio in Norfolk. He helped Prince Charles to learn to paint and Prince Charles has written the foreword to a biography which was published in 2014. He painted a lot of images of Salisbury and its surrounds.
Arthur George Street (7th April 1892-21st July 1966) - a plaque on Ditchampton farm, to commemorate this the well-known author and broadcaster. He was a renowned broadcaster on the BBC and his 32 titles are much sought after. He wrote at length about country matters during the 1930's.- 1950's.
Stephen Tennant (1906-1987) - The youngest son of a Scottish peer, he was perhaps the brightest of the “bright young things”, a social clique active during the 1920s and 30s. He died in his family manor at Wilsford cum Lake. He is known particularly for his connections: landlord to V S Naipaul, lover of Siegfried Sassoon, inspiration for various characters in the novels of Evelyn Waugh, friend of Rex Whistler and Cecil Beaton.
Leslie Thomas (1931-2014) - Welsh author, best known for his comic novel The Virgin Soldiers, awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2004. He became a vice president of Barnardos. He lived in the Walton Canonry 1988–1998, and in De Vaux House from 2007. His final book, "Almost Heaven" (2010), was a set of stories relating to Salisbury Cathedral and people connected with it.
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) - English novelist, who wrote in his Autobiography: “I visited Salisbury, and whilst wandering there one mid-summer evening round the purlieus of the cathedral I conceived the story of The Warden, from whence came that series of novels of which Barchester was the central site.” He goes on: “I began The Warden at Tenbury in Worcestershire. It was then more than twelve months since I had stood for an hour on the little bridge in Salisbury, and had made out to my own satisfaction the spot on which Hiram’s Hospital should stand.”
Rex Whistler (1905-1944) and Laurence Whistler (1912-2000) - Rex was an outstanding artist and designer, who lived in Walton Canonry for a number of years. His younger brother Laurence, a nationally celebrated glass engraver, was married in Salisbury Cathedral with Rex acting as his best man. One of Laurence’s glass engravings (a three-sided prism revolving on a small turntable so that the prism's internal reflections completed the image) is housed in the Cathedral’s Morning Chapel as a memorial to Rex. In 2013, the Salisbury Museum acquired an extensive archive, compiled by Laurence Whistler, of drawings, book illustrations, stage and mural designs and other material by Rex.
Richard Woods (1715-1793) - Designer of the Bourne Hill gardens.
James Wyatt (1746-1813) - The architect who was commissioned by Bishop Shute Barrington to carry out a controversial and destructive restoration of Salisbury Cathedral between 1787 and 1793. He was also responsible for the design, for William Beckford, of the ill-fated Fonthill Abbey in Fonthill Gifford.
Florence Nightingale - A famous nurse who might have practised at Salisbury Infirmary.
The Saxon Cedric - The name Cerdic remained Cerdic until Walter Scott popularised him as Cedric in Ivanhoe in 1819. See plaque number 97.
According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicles:
A.D. 534:- This year died Cerdic, the first king of the West Saxons. Cynric his son succeeded to the government, and reigned afterwards twenty-six winters. And they gave to their two nephews, Stuff and Wihtgar, the whole of the Isle of Wight.
A.D. 552:- This year Cynric fought with the Britons on the spot that is called Sarum, and put them to flight. Cerdic was the father of Cynric, Cerdic was the son of Elesa, Elesa of Esla, Esla of Gewis, Gewis of Wye, Wye of Frewin, Frewin of Frithgar, Frithgar of Brand, Brand of Balday, Balday of Woden. In this year Ethelbert, the son of Ermenric, was born, who on the two and thirtieth year of his reign received the rite of baptism, the first of all the kings in Britain.
Edwin Young - He gifted an Art Gallery to Salisbury. See plaque numbers 37 and 38
Augustus John - A major british artist who used to lived at Fryern Court near Fordingbridge and drank at the Haunch of Venison in a room known as the Captain's Cabin.
Edith Olivier - A novelist of Huguenot descent, born in Wilton, one of ten children of a Rector and later a Canon of Wilton, educated at St Hugh's College, Oxford. She at one stage lived at 20 The Close.
Lovibond Court - to commemorate the founding of Lovibond Tintomter works on this site in the late 19th century.
Catherine Lovibond - Business woman; founder of Stonehenge Woollen Industries. A plaque to be placed on the old S.P.C.K. shop in the High Street. She tried to help the unemployed rural poor in the county by encouraging people to knit and so generate an income to help support their families, at the beginning of the 20th century.
Commemorating Bourne Hill as the home of Salisbury District Council from 1927 until its demise.
John Constable - a plaque to be sited on the Long bridge, Elizabeth Gardens.
John Ivie - a plaque to be placed on the house of John Ivie, mayor of Salisbury in 1627. When the plague arrived in the city he organised the food supplies and care of its citizens, when everyone else in authority had fled.
W.H. Hudson - the author of “A Shepherd’s Life”. He used to live in a farmhouse near Martin.
Nomansland Reading Room - to celebrate their centenary in 2010.
St Clement’s Church - The church was built at Fisherton Anger before 1319, when first surviving mention occurs, and demolished in 1852. Some of its materials and artefacts were used in the construction of St Paul’s church between 1851-53. The churchyard still survives as a cemetery.
Henry Fielding - Henry Fielding was a novelist and playwright, born April 22nd 1707- died October 8th 1754. He had a house near St Ann’s Gate in Salisbury's Cathedral Close. Over four years he wooed the three Craddock sisters, who lived at 14 The Close. In February 1734 he married the eldest Charlotte Craddock and at first lived here in her mother’s house. The couple lived happily together for ten years until Charlotte died of a fever in Bath in 1744. There is a long article here on Henry Fielding.

Links to other Web Sites

Click here   to learn what the White Hart hotel in Salisbury has to offer.

Click here   for an exciting site concerning some of Salisbury's intriguing history, by Frogg Moody.

Click here   for the website of a current plaque manufacturer.

Click here   for a website on blue plaques and their history.

Click here   for the origin of Salisbury street names.

Click here   for details of memorials and monuments in Portsmouth.

Click here   for details of the English Heritage London's plaques.