· Salisbury is the only Cathedral city in the county of Wiltshire. It’s Cathedral was built between 1075 and 1092 by St Bishop Osmund.
· Despite the fact that the actual city of Salisbury was not established until 1220, it has always been an area of settlement. It’s previous inhabitants have included the Romans, the Saxons and the Normans, and it was the Normans that built a castle or “Seresberi” by 1086, the settlement was known in the Domesday Book and “Salesberie”.
· Salisbury lies in the midst of many famous settlements and geographic features, one of the closest and perhaps the most famous of all is Stonehenge, which lies just 8 miles away from the city.
· 60,000 tonnes of Chilmark Stone and 10,000 tonnes of Purbeck stone were used to build the Cathedral.
· The Cathedral’s roof covers four acres and it took 420 tonnes of lead to cover it. 28,000 tonnes of oak were also used to construct the building’s roof.
· Salisbury is well supplied with pubs. ‘The Haunch of Venison’, overlooking the Poultry Cross, still operates from a 14th century building. One of its main attractions is a cast of a mummified hand, supposedly severed during a game of cards.
· Salisbury is widely known as a haunted city and ghost tours are very popular with locals and visitors. One such building is the local Odeon cinema which is located in the Hall of John Halle – the oldest building in the UK to contain a cinema.
· Salisbury city used to be represented by a different football club, who played in the late 19th century. They played in the Southern League Second Division between 1906 and 1911. The current club does not consider itself to be related.
· The city’s most famous landmark, the Cathedral, took only 38 years to build.
· Inside Salisbury Cathedral is the oldest working clock in Britain which dates back to 1386? It is almost certainly also the oldest working mechanical device of any complexity in the world. Incredibly the clock, which has neither hands nor dial but merely marks the passage of time by the striking of bells.
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