There was a big crowd, making lost of noise[1].

Quite a lot came from Dover.

I didn’t take any pics during the game, but a Twitter chum asked me to keep him updated:

@blackflag23 no score as yet.

Still no score at ray mac

@blackflag23 0 0 half time

@blackflag23 salisbury score 1-0 free kick

@blackflag23 80mins. Still one up

1-1 Deflected goal

Extra time at ray mac

Salisbury 3-1 !!

Salisbury win 3-2

Ended 3-2. Great the whites are back in the Prem.

pic.twitter.com/3Ofm08YSfP

This the the presentation of the Play Off trophy. The really sad thing here, if you can make it out in the photo, is the Dover fan’s coaches – they were just moving off at the time of the presentation. The coaches were high enough up that their fans would have had a good view of the Salisbury celebrations. Long way back to Dover….

Finally[2], the trophy being paraded around the pitch.

Footnotes

1. My friend’s daughter counted a fairly impressive 106 swear-words during the match
2. You should see how poor the photos I haven’t posted are

Salisbury’s courts were groups of houses clustered around a central yard. They were criticized as unhealthy at the time of the Salisbury cholera epidemic.

There is a watercolour of Fulford Place on the Wiltshire Treasures website by E A Phipson. The web page says that the painting is from 1921, but I don’t know whether Fulford Place still existed at that time.

The map below isn’t hugely useful as it stands (I’ll upload a better one when I can). Scots Lane runs just below the bottom of the map, and Castle Street is just visible on the left.

The entrance to Fulford Place on Castle Street would have been about here on Castle Street:

Fulford Place and the Salisbury Fulford Family

I would imagine that Fulford Place was named after somebody called Fulford – probably the owner.

The Victoria County of History mentions a “10-acre Fulford’s Mead” near Bulbridge in the 17th Century. The ‘apostrophe-s’ makes the ownership explicit in the case of Fulford’s Mead, but it’s perhaps safe enough to assume the naming of Fulford Place was also a reference to a Mr or Ms Fulford.

‘Fulford’ isn’t perhaps one of the most prominent names in Salisbury’s history, but I’ve found various mentions of Fulfords through the ages.

One example is in the 1875 Kelly’s Commercial Directory, an Admiral Fulford is listed as a vice president of the Salisbury Diocesian House of Mercy[1]. The same Admiral Fulford (presumably) is featured in a sad little article in a New York Times of 1887. Fulford had two sons, one went into the Army the other into the Navy. Both died in service. The New York Times describes Fulford as living ‘an almost broken-hearted old age’[2].

Fulford, Yorkshire

The best known place called ‘Fulford’ in this country is near York. It’s famous as being the site of one of the ‘other’ battles of 1066. The battle was between King Harald III of Norway (also known as Harald Hardrada) and the Anglo-Saxon earls Edwin and Morcar. The invaders won the battle

The UK Battlefields Resource Centre says that:

the combined losses at Fulford and Stamford Bridge must have severely weakened Harold’s army and contributed significantly to its destruction at Hastings. [3]

Footnotes

1. Salisbury – Kelly’s Commercial Directory 1875.pdf
2. Admiral Fulford. – View Article – NYTimes.com – Published: September 18, 1887
3. UK Battlefields Resource Centre – Britons, Saxons & Vikings – The Norman Conquest – The Battle of Battle of Fulford

From my point of view it’s a similar idea to writing about road names. It’s a mechanism for writing about Salisbury from a different angle.

I’ve enjoyed doing it so far. Recent tweets have included the following.

Tweets by @sarum_matt

If you’d like to see this sort of nonsense in your Twitter feed, the button below should do a ‘follow’.

Follow @salisbury_matt

Footnotes

1. ‘Notable or interesting’ is very much in the eye of the beholder!

• Gainsborough Close, Salisbury – probably named after the painter Gainsborough, who came to Wilton to see the dressage horses
• Gawthorne Drive, Harnham – named after the first Captain on Salisbury Fire Brigade, and owner of both the Cathedral and Red Lion hotels



• George Street, Salisbury – ‘george’ comes from the Greek for ‘land worker’. Same roots as ‘geology’ and ‘ergonomic’
• Gibbs Close, Salisbury – no idea why its caused Gibbs Close, but I did write a couple of paragraphs on Gibbs Mew, of fond memory.
• Gigant Street, Salisbury – ‘gigant’ comes from ‘gygorn’, which means ‘fiddle’ or ‘violin’
• Gilbert Way, Salisbury -named after not enitirely universally popular bishop
• Gipsy Lane, Milford – reading about the persecution of gypsies through the centuries was a bit depressing. Consequently, this post is mainly a collection of links.
• Glendale Crescent, Milford – the Cramps and Postman Pat, together at last. Pat lives in Greendale, which was partly based on a place called Glendale. My favourite ‘psycho-billy’ band lived in Glendale, LA.
• Glenmore Road, Salisbury – ‘Glenmore’ sounds like an old word, but as far as I can tell it’s a recent construction
• Glyndebourne Close, Salisbury – probably a reference to the opera fest. Glyndeborne is connected to the Wallops.
• Godley Road, Harnham – named after a military man ??? who was based at ‘The Cliff’ in Harnham
• Gorringe Road, Salisbury – I didn’t work out who Gorringe was, but I think he may rhyme with ‘orange’
• Grace Close, Salisbury – I wrote a good deal about ‘Amazing Grace’
• Gramshaw Terrace, Salisbury – with the possible exception of the post about Moberly Road, the post about Gramshaw Terrace took the longest to write. I’ve no idea why it’s called ‘Gramshaw Terrace’ but I enjoyed a lengthy digression about ‘the Squire Gramshaa’ and ‘the Hurdcott Hunt’
• Grange Gardens, Salisbury – I had some good times at the Grange Hotel in the late ’70s and early ’90s seeing Crass, Black Roots and Havana Let’s Go. Havana Let’s Go supported The Clash and inspired a song by the Pogues
• Grasmere Close, Harnham – the village of Grasmere in the Lake District is most closely associated with the poet Wordsworth. Wordsworth’s nephew John (who founded the school) owned land very close to (and possibly including) Grasmere Close in Harnham
• Great Western Terrace, Salisbury – Great Western Terrace is now Windsor Terrace. ‘Great Western’ is probably a reference to the railway
• Greencroft Street, Salisbury – the Greencroft has been the site of demonstrations, executions and the drying of textiles
• Green Lane, Odstock and Green Lane, Salisbury – I need to re-write these, but the post on Odstock’s Green Lane is worth looking at for the superb artwork that ??? kindly allowed me to use
• Greens Court, Salisbury – probably named after a Mr or Ms Green, but I’ve not been able to work out who
• Greenwood Avenue, Laverstock – Greenwood could be a surname, or it could just denote ‘leafiness’
• Greyfriars Close, Salisbury – a reference to the Franciscans who lived and worked in Salisbury until King Henry VIII shut them down and stole their land
• Greyhound Lane, Wilton – a possible derivation of the word ‘greyhound’ is ‘gaze-hound’, because the grey hound tracks prey by sight rather than smell
• Griffins Court, Salisbury – John and James Griffin owned a timber yard off of Fisherton Street
• Grovely View, Wilton – probably named after Grovely Woods
• Guilder Lane, Salisbury – I’d assumed that ‘Guilder’ was a reference to Salisbury’s Guilds (as in Guildhall), but the VCH says it’s from ‘Gelderland’. Gelderland is a province of Holland, the main town of which is Arnhem

I was ‘researching’ Lady Hulse for a Twitter account[2] I’ve set up called @sarum_matt

Edith Hulse was Salisbury’s first Lady Mayor. She was one of the first three Lady Mayors in the country[3].

I stumbled across the letter from Kipling to Lady Hulse, while I looking for the date of her mayor-making. The letter is on a website that specializes in actioning autographs[4]. Given that the auction page may be removed at some stage, I thought it was worthwhile reproducing the words here.

Telegraph: Burwash
Train: Etchingham
Bateman’s
Burwash
* Sussex *

Jan 18 1917

Dear Lady Hulse
Thank you from us both for your goodness in sending us the book of your boys’ letters. It will be put away with our other treasures.

I think the most wonderful thing in all these letters is the joy with which the children undertook their work and the way they lived their splendid lives out to the last.

There is nothing one can say; but perhaps, when it is time to talk of peace, we who have lost may be able to do something towards making that peace a firm one.

I hope summer will see [extract finishes]

The website only has the first page of the letter. If I can find the rest, I’ll update this page

Picture Credit

Portait of Kipling is from the Bain Collection (Library of Congress) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Footnotes

1. Kipling is perhaps most famous for ‘The Jungle Book’ and the poem ‘If’. The poem is:

   If you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
   If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
   If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
   Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

   If you can dream – and not make dreams
   your master;
   If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
   If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
   If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
   Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
   And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

   If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
   And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
   If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
   And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

   If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
   If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
   If you can fill the unforgiving minute
   With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
   And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

   Despite the last few words, ‘you’ll be a Man, my son‘ the poem is not directly about Kipling’s son John. The poem is believed to have been inspired by a man called Leander Starr Jameson, who led a daring raid in the Boer War. The ‘Kipling Journal’ of September 2003 discusses this briefly – the journal in online here. Jameson died on 26 November 1917, a few months after Kipling wrote the letter featured here.

   ‘If’ was voted Britain’s favourite poem in 1995. Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was never made ‘Sir Rudyard Kipling‘, nor was he ever poet laureate.
   

2. The @sarum_matt account tweets what has happened ‘on this day’ in Salisbury’s history. Some of the things it covers are historical, such as Penruddock’s insurrection against Cromwell, some are related to pop culture, such as Buddy Holly playing at the Odeon, some are just local news.
   
3. The first Lady Mayor was appointed a couple of years previously in Norwich. One other Lady Mayor was appointed on the same day as Ms Hulse
   
4. The auction website is Catalogue Details
   

The Salisbury Gas Light and Coke Company[1] was founded in 1832, with the Earl of Radnor as chairman[2]. The Salisbury Gas Works was built in 1833, and gas production continued until 1958.

In principle, gas was made by heating coal and collecting the gas that the coal gave off. The gas was then purified and supplied to the customers. The process created a number of significant, and lucrative by-products. Coke (the solid residue after the gas had been driven off the coal) was used for heating, ammonia was used in fertilizers and tar was used in road making.

The Gasworks was situated where it is because the coal came into the nearby Salisbury railway station.

By the end of 1833, it was announced that Fisherton Street would be lit by gaslight. Fisherton Street was presumably the first road to be lit because it was the closest of Salisbury’s main roads to the gasworks.

Gaslight gradually spread through the city. In 1879 Mr E.F. Kelsey requested a gas main to light his new housing estate.

In 1894, demand for gas in Salisbury was such that a second holder was built on the eastern side of Coldharbour Lane. Salisbury had two gas holders until 1960, when it was demolished.

In 1941, the gas works was attacked by the German Luftwaffe. On the 11th August, 2 planes dropped at least one bomb and fired shells and bullets at the gas holders. The gas holders were punctured [3] and parts of the works was set alight. The attack occured at 4.30 in the afternoon, but the Salisbury Fire Brigade extinguished the fires by 5.40. The Gas workers managed to plug the holes in the tanks with wood and clay, and, as the Mr Watts SWIAS publication notes, although 350,000 cubic feet of gas was lost, “in best gas industry style, the supply to the town was not interrupted”

During the 1950s and 1960s gas companies across the country converted from coal to oil, and in 1970 a natural gas pipeline, coming from Andover (the pipeline not the gas!) reached Salisbury. In 1989, this was supplemented by another pipeline coming from Braishfield.

The remaining ‘No. 2′ gas holder has a greater volume than the Cathedral. According to SWIAS the holder ‘is not now essential’. At the time the ??? was written it was thought that as soon as much repair work was need the holder would be demolished. I don’t know whether this is still the position – I’d be grateful if anyone can let me know.

Update: I found an article on the British Association for Local History website which says that:

Here in Salisbury the last and largest of three gas holders built in 1933 (and confusingly labelled No 1) survives as an automatically operated holding tank, and towers over a superstore, its tank rising and falling in response to local usage.

It’s not obvious when this was written, but there’s a reference to a publication which seems to be from autumn 2005, so it must be subsequent to that.

Footnotes

1. The name of the company is informative – the sole use of gas when the company was formed was lighting. Coke was a significant by-product
2. Most of the information here comes from ‘Salisbury Gasworks: The Salisbury Gas Light and Coke Company’ by John H. Watts, under the auspices of the South Wiltshire Industrial Archaeology Society. This post has very basic information – there’s lots more interesting detail in the SWIAS publication. It’s available on request in Salisbury Reference Library
3. There were 16 holes in the no. 1 holder and 15 in the no.2. The biggest hole measured 7 inches.

If you click on the link below it should download the original pdf.

Snowdrop pdf file

This coming weekend is the start of the Shaftesbury Snowdrop Festival. This originated as a commemoration of the Jubilee last year. As I understand it, individuals and organizations sponsored the purchase of lots of snowdrops bulbs (or seeds, or cuttings – gardening isn’t my strong point) and then they were planted around the town by volunteers.

To tie in with the blooming of the snow-drops the Snowdrop Festival is taking place.

There’s an art exhibition from Saturday onwards and on Sunday there are story-telling events for adults and children – the adult event is called ‘ale and a tale’, which sounds quite fun.

For more detail:

• Shaftesbury Snowdrops on Twitter
• Home – Shaftesbury Snowdrops

By: Sam Greenhalgh

There’s an article on South Wiltshire Community Matters website about the Council’s work on empty homes. In brief if you know of a home that’s been left empty, you can report it the the Empty Homes Officer for investigation – Update on empty homes in South West Wiltshire | South West Wiltshire Our Community Matters

A walking group has been set up at Salisbury – New walking group in Salisbury | Salisbury Our Community Matters

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has the Avebury to Stonehenge sponsored run/walk on the 5th May – Charity Run At Stonehenge For Wiltshire Wildlife Trust – Heart Wiltshire News

What’s On – Tracks: Walking the Ancient Landscapes of Britain | Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum

I found Jane Tomlinson’s work on the Heritage Journal website. Ms. Tomlinson has lots of great images on her own web pages, but I was particularly interested in the work that reflects the West Country and its geography, for example – West Country magic and Slow down, stone circle!

Film-maker Jacqueline Riding created some pieces for the ‘Constable and Salisbury’ exhibition at Salisbury Museum in 2011. These are now online here: Films (The Art of the Sublime) | Tate

There is an update on the Salisbury Market Place project here: Latest News | Wiltshire Council

The BBC has some great picture of an illuminated Lacock Abbey – BBC News – In pictures: Historic Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire lit up

My guess would be that Gainsborough Close is named after the painter Thomas Gainsborough, but I don’t know for sure. I’ve not been able to find any prominent Gainsboroughs with Salisbury connections as yet. If the road isn’t named after somebody local, then Thomas Gainsborough would be the obvious Gainsborough to name a road after.

Gainsborough was born in 1727, the son of a wool merchant in Sudbury, Suffolk. He worked under William Hogarth and eventually became one of the two most foremost portrait painters of his time[1] . He was a founder member of the Royal Society and reputedly King George III’s favourite portraitist[2].

He is chiefly known as a painter of portraits, but I get the impression that he enjoyed painting landscape. The Dictionary of National Biography has a nice quote from John Constable:

The landscape of Gainsborough is soothing, tender, and affecting. The stillness of noon, the depths of twilight, and the dews and pearls of the morning, are all to be found in the canvases of this most benevolent and kind-hearted man. On looking at them, we have tears in our eyes, and know not what brings them[3]

Gainsborough died in 1788[4].

Thomas Gainsborough and Wilton

As far as I can see, Gainsborough had no significant connection with Salisbury or south Wiltshire, He did visit Wilton House, ostensibly to see the horses. The Dictionary of National Biography says that:

In 1764 the demands of General Honywood’s equestrian portrait[5] led to Gainsborough’s visiting Wilton House to draw horses, presumably those trained in dressage[6].

While at Wilton House, Gainsborough obviously had a good look at the Herberts' art collection. The Dictionary of National Biography says that one of the paintings at Wilton influenced Gainsborough's work:

Slightly later in the decade, perhaps after he had visited Wilton House near Salisbury in 1764, he painted a series of female portraits employing the pose of Lady Anne Sophia Herbert from Van Dyck's huge Pembroke Family at Wilton House. The best of them is Lady Carr

I've reproduced a couple of examples. The painting on the left is cropped from the 'original' van Dyck[7]. The next is Gainsborough’s portrait of Mary Little (later Lady Carr), referred to by the DNB[8] and the one on the right is Gainsborough’s Lady Sarah Innes[9].

Thomas Gainsborough – from the streets of Salisbury to the craters of Mercury

While reading a little about Thomas Gainsborough I discovered that as well as Gainsborough Close on Bemerton Heath, Gainsborough has also been honoured by the naming of a crater on the planet Mercury. The crater formerly known as ‘feature 2061′ was named Crater Gainsborough in 1985[10].

The naming of Mercury’s craters is an on-going project. Just last month another 9 craters were named – after Walt Disney, Catullus, Scott Joplin, and Muddy WatersNames Approved for Nine Craters on Mercury – USGS Astrogeology Hot Topics, among others.

I was curious as to whether anybody besides Thomas Gainsborough has been honoured with both a road in Salisbury and a crater on the smallest planet. It’s a fairly small group:

• John Milton – the crater was named in 1976[11]. I think Milton Road in Salisbury would be 1930s[12]. John Milton is famous for writing ‘Paradise Lost’ and being a supporter of Oliver Cromwell.
• Percy Shelley – the crater was named in 1979[13], Salisbury’s ‘Shelley Drive’ was built in, I think, the late 1960s in Stratford-sub-Castle[14]. I’m assuming that Shelley Drive is named after the poet Percy rather than Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.
• William Shakespeare – the crater was also named in 1979[15]. Shakespeare Avenue was built at around the same time as Shelley Drive[16]. I think the naming of Shakespeare Road is a sort of a pun on the name of the suburb – Stratford-sub-Castle.

Two marginal cases are the craters named after Christopher Wren[17] and Robert Louis Stevenson[18]. Salisbury has a residential road called Wrenscourt in Bishops Mead, but this is a reference to the bird rather than the architect[19]. Salisbury’s Stephenson Road, on the other hand, is named after the engineer Robert Stephenson – famous for his rocket[20] rather than RL Stephenson who wrote ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Jekyll and Hyde’

Crater Gainsborough. Image from the IAU[21]

Footnotes

1. I did also find that he is linked to the television show ‘Blackadder’. In the episode ‘Dual and Duality’, Baldrick says that ‘his cousin Bert Baldrick is currently dogsbody to Thomas Gainsborough’s butler’[User:ProhibitOnions/Historical anomalies in Blackadder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia].
2. Thomas Gainsborough | artist | 1727 – 1788 | The National Gallery, London
3. Hugh Belsey, ‘Gainsborough, Thomas (1727–1788)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10282, accessed 10 Jan 201326 Nov 2012]
4. Gainsborough does have the distinction of having an obituary published many years before he actually died. The Bath Journal published the news of his death on 17 Oct 1763 – about 25 years before he really died
5. The ‘equestrian portrait’ was this one: Portrait of Lieutenant General Philip Honeywood
6. Hugh Belsey, ‘Gainsborough, Thomas (1727–1788)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10282, accessed 26 Nov 2012
7. Anthony van Dyck [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
8. Thomas Gainsborough [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons
9. Thomas Gainsborough [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons
10. Planetary Names: Crater, craters: Gainsborough on Mercury
11. Planetary Names: Crater, craters: Milton on Mercury
12. Milton Road
13. Planetary Names: Crater, craters: Shelley on Mercury
14. Shelley Drive
15. Planetary Names: Crater, craters: Shakespeare on Mercury
16. Shakespeare Road
17. Planetary Names: Crater, craters: Wren on Mercury
18. Planetary Names: Crater, craters: Stevenson on Mercury
19. Wrenscroft SP2 « Salisbury and Stonehenge
20. Stephenson Road
21. The IAU is the International Astronomical Union. My understanding is that “All IAU still and footage are copyright-protected on behalf of the IAU and are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.” See Copyright | IAU for details