Salisbury

Salisbury began on the hill now called Old Sarum, two miles to the north. The hilltop shows signs of settlement from early times and fell to Cynric of Wessex in 552; King Alfred restored its defences against the Vikings, and Sweyn Forkbeard sacked it in 1003. After the Norman Conquest it held a castle and a cathedral, which Bishop Roger expanded in the 1110s, but in 1220 Bishop Richard Poore moved the cathedral down to his estate beside the rivers. A legend says the site was chosen by shooting an arrow from Old Sarum, although the distance is over two miles. Henry III made New Sarum a city by charter in 1227, the cathedral was built between 1220 and 1258, and the spire was added later.

By the 14th century New Sarum was the largest town in Wiltshire, a market and cloth-trading city laid out on a grid around its Market Place, while a wall built partly from the stones of the old cathedral enclosed the Close. In 1289 Edward I met Scottish envoys here to agree the Treaty of Salisbury, and Charles II held court in the Close during the Great Plague. In 1688 James II halted at Salisbury as his officers deserted to William of Orange, and turned back.

In the Second World War factories in the city centre, staffed largely by young women trained for the work, built parts for Spitfire aircraft; a full-size model Spitfire was unveiled as their memorial in 2021. In March 2018 the former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in the city with a Novichok nerve agent. New Sarum remained the city's official name until 2009, when Salisbury City Council was created.

The cathedral dominates the city's identity, and its spire has drawn artists for centuries: John Constable made a number of celebrated landscapes featuring the spire and the surrounding countryside, and William Golding's novel The Spire tells the story of building a cathedral spire very like this one. The best-preserved of the four surviving original copies of Magna Carta draws visitors from around the world, and daily services keep the cathedral a working church rather than a monument.

Salisbury has a strong arts life for a city of its size. The International Arts Festival, held each year in late May and early June since the 1970s, fills the city with theatre, music, dance and outdoor events. Salisbury Playhouse produces its own plays as well as hosting touring shows, the Arts Centre occupies a former medieval church, and galleries line the centre, including one in the library.

Sport is local in scale: Salisbury F.C. play at the Raymond McEnhill Stadium on the northern edge of the city, and the racecourse on the downs to the south-west has hosted flat racing since the 16th century. The market, held since 1227, remains a fixture of the week, and the old pubs around the Market Place are where much of the city's social life takes place.

About 41,800 people live in the civil parish of Salisbury, which leaves out suburbs such as Laverstock and Ford; at the 2011 census the wider urban zone, including neighbouring Wilton, had about 62,000. It is a small, prosperous-looking city that serves a large rural area of south Wiltshire, and much of daily life follows the rhythm of the Tuesday and Saturday markets and the flow of visitors to the cathedral and to Stonehenge.

Salisbury District Hospital is one of the largest employers, alongside retail, tourism and services. The closure of the Friends Life office, the second-largest employer, was announced in 2015, and after the 2018 poisoning twelve sites in the city went through an intensive clean-up.

Most residents live in the suburbs around the old centre: Harnham across the Avon to the south, Fisherton towards the station, and newer estates to the north and east. The rivers shape the city's map and its leisure: in summer families paddle in the shallows at Queen Elizabeth Gardens, and walkers cross the water meadows on the Town Path, which floods in wet winters. Traffic on the A36 is a constant local complaint.

Salisbury's food is the food of a market town in farming country. The charter market has been held in the Market Place regularly since 1227; in the 15th century four crosses marked separate markets for poultry, for cheese and milk, for wool and yarn, and for livestock, and the Poultry Cross still stands. Pubs in medieval buildings serve traditional English food, the best known being the Haunch of Venison beside the Poultry Cross, in a 14th-century building with game and poultry on its menu.

Wiltshire bacon has a long history: in Calne, the Harris family of pork butchers, in business from the second half of the 18th century, cured bacon and hams by the Wiltshire method the family had developed. Fisherton Street, between the river and the station, is lined with curry houses and Chinese restaurants, while New Street near the cathedral entrance has some of the city's more upmarket restaurants, and cafés around the centre serve cooked breakfasts, coffee and cakes through the day.