City of Salisbury

The diarist Samuel Pepys visited Salisbury on 10th - 12th June 1668 ‘guided all over the Plain by the sight of the steeple’ of the cathedral and stayed at the George Inn, ‘where lay in silk bed; and very good diet’, on his way to Stonehenge.

He found the town ‘a very brave place with the river go through every street’ (a system of canals for water and drainage) ‘and a most capacious market’.

The heavy old timbers of the George Inn now form the entrance to Old George Mall, where a plaque used to commemorate Pepys’s visit.

Other diarists to visit the city included John Evelyn, Celia Fiennes and Daniel Defoe, also en route to Stonehenge.

Sir Walter Ralegh stayed at the old White Hart Inn in 1618, after a disastrous voyage to the New World, biding his time writing a defence of his exploits, Apology for the Voyage to Guyana, for presentation to an angry King James.

The present seventeenth century building has a classical façade dating from 1820 and a large stone white hart on its dome, described by Charles Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4).

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