Locals have sung the tiny city’s praises as a wonderful place to visit and just over an hour away from London
With summer drawing to a close, many of us will be eagerly looking for spots near London for day trips or even long weekends away to make the most of the weather before the cold really sets in.
One perfect autumnal destination is Salisbury in Wiltshire, which is just over an hour from London on a South Western Railway train. Should you go there and fall in love, then you may have hit the jackpot, as a home sets you back about £334,613 on average, half the price of London’s average home of £663,348.
It’s also seen its fair share of famous faces there over the years, from The Chase’s ‘The Beast’ Mark Labbett going to school there, as well as Lord Voldemort Actor Ralph Fiennes. Peep Show legend David Mitchell was also born there. In fact, it was the winner of The Sunday Times Best Places to Live guide in 2019
One of the USPs is Salisbury Cathedral, which boasts Britain’s tallest spire at over 400 feet. It also has four copies of the 1215 Magna Carta, something of great interest for history buffs. The city’s also home to the world’s oldest working mechanical clock, dating back to 1386.
Better yet, about eight miles north of the city lies the famous prehistoric stone monument Stonehenge, found on Salisbury Plain. You may also want to have a poke around the two markets held in Market Square each week.
MyLondon spoke to two local councillors about what makes Salisbury so great. Cllr Chris Taylor has lived in the city for 30 years, so he has a brilliant command of the city.
He said one of the best things there is the feeling of being a ‘village in a city,’ adding that the place has been informally dubbed ‘Smallsbury’ by the locals. He described there being lots of ‘interconnecting social networks’. “Very quickly, if you find yourself talking to somebody, you will often have friends in common or people you know in common,” he said.
The Cllr thinks it’s a good thing as ‘if you’re all interconnected and have overlapping, social networks and connections, that all helps build that sense of us all being one team, and on the same side’.
‘Good schools’
Cllr Taylor puts this down to many people having been to the same schools, with ‘two good grammar schools’ in the city, and other good schools ‘in the peripheries.’ He added that Salisbury enjoys being the ‘third lowest crime rate county in England.’ He said new homes being built there are indicative of how it’s ‘a place where people make their home’.
Salisbury is also ‘blessed’ with nature, with a river and water meadows stretching around the city. In fact, the great local nature is ‘one of the reasons’ the city ‘didn’t have a bypass built many years ago.’
He said: “There are lots of walks, there’s lots of bridleways, and we’ve got five rivers running in and out of Salisbury. There are lots of nice scenic valleys, lots of chalk streams, and the rural area is very pretty. We’ve also got lots of things to see, like Stonehenge.”
Cllr Taylor encouraged people to go and visit Salisbury Cathedral, which ‘is a centrepiece of the city’. He told us it was the tallest building in Europe until the Eiffel Tower’s completion.
But the city centre is also worth visiting, with ‘people coming in to shop, better than Winchester just down the road.’ There are also around ‘12 restaurants scattered across the main square.’ The Cllr spoke highly of the ‘rule’ preventing buildings being too high, which protects the skyline and locals can ‘see the Cathedral spire from pretty much anywhere in town.’
The city is also easily accessible from London, as well as Exeter, and Devon, he said.
We also spoke to Cllr Ted Last, who has lived there for seven years and represented his ward for about 18 months. Like Cllr Taylor, he spoke highly of the area, describing it as a ‘cohesive community.’ “The community has a good understanding that we’re all the same. We all share the same desires and wishes for ourselves and others. It sounds silly but the spire on the cathedral is a central point of the community. When I see that spire as I drive back, I think, ‘I’m home’.”
He thinks the people being ‘inclusive’ down to the fact locals are well-educated and have travelled. He contrasted them to people from other places such as Kent who aren’t as well-travelled and see refugees arriving on Kent shores as ‘different from us.’
Cllr Last said: “They want a life where they’re secure, that’s all they’re searching for. They’re no more the aggressor than we are. In fact, many of them are far less. They just want safety and security.”
‘The great nature is being destroyed’
He told us the surrounding green space is ‘great’, but it’s ‘being destroyed.’ Cllr Last lives near the ‘great community asset the Lime Kiln Reserve’, and spoke highly of Harnham Woods as well as the ‘merging rivers.’ He even told us how ‘many people don’t realise that there are salmon in those rivers.’
But he feels some of the local nature ‘that is worth preserving’ is under threat from the ‘development down on the flood plains.’ He concedes that building homes is necessary, but relevant infrastructure isn’t being built alongside it, which could strain local resources.
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