Salisbury’s industrial heritage was the topic for the July monthly meeting.  At first thought, industry might not seem to have a lot to do with Salisbury’s reputation as a world class historical tourist attraction.  But Don Cross, a blue badge guide with many years’ experience – he started age 12! – brought the city’s industrial heritage to life in an engaging and informative illustrated talk.

Hospitality and Tourism, he reminded us, is an industry with a long pedigree.  Today there are 48 pubs in the city, a good number but many fewer than a few years ago.  And Salisbury boasts the oldest hotel in Britain, the Red Lion, built around 1226 to accommodate builders on the “new” cathedral, the original one being at Old Sarum, where only the foundations remain.  Several breweries supplied the pubs, but no more.  One in Castle Street opposite Chipper Lane, with a handsome façade, was demolished in 1969 to make way for a singularly uninspiring edifice - now Tesco’s.

In the Middle Ages Salisbury was a centre of the wool trade.  The 1470 hall home of a prosperous wool merchant has now been converted into the cinema, an example of creative adaptation.  Tanning was another important medieval industry.  The last leather factory, producing luxury skins including crocodile was demolished in the 1960s to make way for the ring road. 

Salisbury’s rivers provided water and power for tanning and processing wool.  The Avon was also navigable from Christchurch up to the 1760s but there was no evidence of the vessels used, until someone spotted an 18th century picture of Salisbury hanging in an Australian art gallery showing a wherry on the river.

Two railway companies came to Salisbury in the 19th century, the Great Western Railway from the west, and the London and South Western.  And if the library façade looks like a railway station, it was.  For a single track line was built in 1860 to link the city centre with the station off Fisherton Street.

A century ago Salisbury was also briefly home to the motor industry.  The Scout Motor Company, founded in 1902, made delivery vans, taxis and the first buses for the Wilts & Dorset bus company.  At Old Sarum several Belfast hangars (so-called because the roof trusses were prefabricated in Belfast) were built in 1915 using German POW labour.  Initially an RAF training depot, the hangars are now occupied by the Old Sarum Flying Club. They are now listed buildings.

Today Salisbury is a busy shopping centre.  Supermarkets and shopping malls have replaced the factories, workshops and steam laundries of the past.  Industry has moved into the suburbs to leave a clean and (mostly) picturesque centre.

Don Cross has produced a booklet with a wealth of fascinating detail describing three industrial heritage walks round Salisbury.  It contains a wise quotation from Prof HJ Fleure:

Not all that is old is worth preserving; not all that may be made anew is necessarily an improvement.  We need to be able to appreciate the difference.

Copies of the talk will be available @ 50p from the Tourist Office from early September to coincide with the National Heritage weekend later in the month.