Salisbury Court

Salisbury Court

South out of Fleet Street, at No. 81, to Salisbury Square (P.O. Directory). In Farringdon Ward Without.

First mention: "Salisburie Court" (S. 399).

Occupies part of the site of the place and Inn of the Bishops of Salisbury, afterwards known as "Sackville House," from the family of Sackville, who resided there.

Destroyed in the Fire and rebuilt.

In Strype's maps, 1720 and 1755, the northern portion is called "Dorset Street" and the southern portion only "Salisbury Court."

Formerly extended south to the Thames, including the street now known as "Dorset Street," Primrose Hill, etc.

Hatton (1708) describes it as a considerable street between Fleet Street and the Thames, in the middle whereof is a small pleasant square.

Named after the Inn of the Bishops of Salisbury there.

Salisbury court, a considerable str. betn Fleet str. N. and the Thames S. in the middle whereof is a small pleasant square. Here (says Stow) was the Bishop of Salisbury's City House, and from that had its Name; and it was afterwards the Dwelling House of Lord Buckhurst, High Treasurer.

Salisbury-Court, Fleet-street,—at 81, the second coach-turning on the L. from Fleet-market, extending to Salisbury-sq.

Salisbury-Ct., Fleet-street, is the second coach turning on the left hand side, going from Bridge-street. It derives its name from the palace of the Bishop of Salisbury, afterwards the town mansion of the Earl of Dorset, which stood adjacent.

Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, or, as it is now written, Salisbury Square, lies to the west of St. Bride's Church, and occupies the site of the courtyard of Salisbury, or, as it was afterwards called, Dorset House. There is now a Salisbury Court as well as a Salisbury Square. In The Squire of Alsatia, by Shadwell (who was an inhabitant of the court), "Salisbury Court" and "Dorset Court" are used indiscriminately one for the other. Salisbury House was the residence of the Bishops of Salisbury, and as Seth Ward, who held the see from 1667 to 1689, told Aubrey, was got from them by the Lord Treasurer Buckhurst (d. 1608), "in exchange for a piece of land near Cricklade in Wilts, I think called Marston, but the title was not good, nor did the value answer his promise."

March 25, 1611.—Confirmation to Richard Earl of Dorset of a grant of the manor of Salisbury Court, together with Salisbury House, alias Sackville Place, alias Dorset House, and divers messuages in St. Bride's and St. Dunstan's on his compounding for defective titles.—Cal. State Pap., 1611–1618.

In 1634 Bulstrode Whitelocke, when urged by his wife to have a town residence as well as one in the country, took a house in Salisbury Court. Whitelocke was absent in France when his wife died, and Edward Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon), writing to him about his affairs, says of his child, "My little friend at Salisbury Court is lusty, and shall give you comfort." He gave up the house on his return. In 1655 the ambassador sent from Sweden to the Protector was lodged in Salisbury Court. Here Whitelocke frequently dined with him, the ambassador complaining of feeling solitary. The large building on the south side, the Salisbury Hotel and Farmers' Club, was erected by the Agricultural Hotel Company, 1863–1864, at a cost of over £23,000, from the designs of John Giles, architect. It has about 100 rooms.

Eminent Inhabitants.—Betterton, Harris, Cave, Underbill, and Sandford the actors, next the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens; Shadwell, the poet; Lady Davenant, the widow of Sir William Davenant; John Dryden;¹ Samuel Richardson, the novelist. "He took a range of old houses, eight in number, which he pulled down, and built an extensive and commodious range of warehouses and printing offices."² His dwelling-house was No. 11, in the north-west corner of the square, and his printing office and warehouse in Blue-ball Court, on the east side of the square.

My first recollection of Richardson was in the house in the centre of Salisbury Square, or Salisbury Court, as it was then called; and of being admitted as a playful child into his study, where I have often seen Dr. Young and others. ... I recollect that he used to drop in at my father's, for we lived nearly opposite, late in the evening to supper; when, as he would say, he had worked as long as his eyes and nerves would let him, and was come to relax with a little friendly and domestic chat.—Mrs. —— to Mrs. Barbauld (Richardson's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 183).

It is said to have been a common practice with Richardson to hide half a crown among the types, that it might reward the diligence of the workman who should be first in the office in the morning; on the other hand, he was so sensible of his own warmth of temper that all his admonitions to his workmen were given in writing!³ Here Richardson wrote his Pamela. Here, for a short time 1757, in the interval between his practice as a "physician in a humble way" on the Bankside and his becoming an usher at Peckham Goldsmith sat as press-corrector to Richardson. And here was printed Maitland's London, folio, 1739, the imprint on the title page being "London: Printed by Samuel Richardson, in Salisbury Court,⁴ near Fleet Street, 1739." Mrs. Delany notes, October 30, 1754, that "Richardson is very busy, removing this very day to Parson's Green. Dr. Delany called yesterday at Salisbury Court." Here, in August 1732, died Mrs. Daffy, preparer of the elixir known by her name.⁵

In 1716 there were many riots in the City, mobs gathering together in processions, with the cry of "High Church and Ormond," breaking windows which were not illuminated when the cry was raised, and "demolishing houses, especially those houses then called Mug-houses, where those who were for King George used to hold societies."⁶ One of the most noted of the Mug-houses was in Salisbury Court, and a Jacobite mob, led by one Bean, pulled down the sign-post, and then breaking into the house, tore down the bar and benches, plundered the cellar and wrecked the premises. In attempting to defend his house Robert Read, the landlord, shot one of the assailants, a weaver named Vaughan, dead. Read was tried for manslaughter and acquitted; but five of the rioters were tried at the Old Bailey, September 7, 1716, for "demolishing" Read's house, found guilty, and all five hanged in Fleet Street, at the end of Salisbury Court.⁷

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¹ Rate-books of St. Martin’s.
² Nichols's Lit. Anec., vol. iv. p. 594.
³ Nichols's Lit. Anec., vol. iv. p. 597.
⁴ Delany Corr., vol. iii. p. 296.
⁵ Historical Register for 1732; The Tatler, by Nichols, vol. vi. p. 41.
⁶ Burton's New View, 1730.
⁷ Ibid.