Just lately the Wiltshire Buildings Record seems to have got involved in some big projects. Our latest commission in Salisbury is just such a one. Salisbury city centre is laid out in a grid pattern, all in one go, known as the Chequers. This ancient layout dates from around 1220, when work on St Mary’s Cathedral began. Each chequer has its own colourfully quaint name. Three Swans chequer and Three cups chequer stand side by side above Antelope chequer. Our present project is in Blue Boar Chequer, to the north of the market place.

One of the buildings in the Blue Boar Chequer

Imagine how excited we got, being given the chance to penetrate the interior of one of these historic chequers! As we amble along the myriad streets of Salisbury all we normally get to see are the shop fronts lining the edges, or modern interior shop fittings, and sometimes the historic fabric of the buildings, warts and all, where this has been kept and subsequently exposed in the current trend for nostalgia.

Lloyd’s Chemist is next to Debenham’s, and is sited on the south side of the Chequer, facing the Market Place. This tall, smart building was constructed in about 1740, no doubt replacing an older, timber-framed one, and contains a grand staircase, panelled walls and old fireplaces, none of which you can see from the shop. The front of the building was modernised in the later 19^th century, and the ground floor shop front in the middle of the 20^th century. To find out about the fascinating documents discovered within the buildings, please 'read more'...

Behind this shop the site extends deeper into the Chequer into a maze of big and small buildings of different ages, all leading into each other, that would not have looked out of place in a Harry Potter movie. Every century from the 17^th was represented here, from the tall, timber-framed and panelled building we christened ‘The Coffee House’, to a brick and timber upper floor storage 18^th century building, and several 19^th century warehouses. For the last two hundred years the main business was a chemist’s, under different leases from the City Corporation: the owners from as far back as could be determined. In the garrets of the Coffee House we found boxes of ancient invoices for scary-sounding preparations to do with arsenic and opium that were dispensed to local worthies as late as the 1960’s. Further back in time the site was leased by a clothier called Samuel Everett, and before him, a goldsmith called John Ivy.

At present we are still working on sorting out this confusing jumble of buildings, where we were told about a locum chemist who had decided to go exploring and got lost. His panicked face was seen a long time later, appearing at an upper window, pleading for a way out!