Taking Stock

South Wiltshire really is stunningly beautiful. The City with its parks and gardens at their best, the tubs and hanging baskets at their peak, our villages spick and span and welcoming, the trees at their most majestic , the fields mature and replete with plenty , the downs sun-kissed and mercifully still supportive of cattle and sheep - this surely is God's own country.

One reason we appreciate it so much is that we have the opportunity to travel far and near on holiday or on business and make our own comparisons. So when we've all got back from holiday perhaps we should spare a moment to see ourselves and our familiar roads and streets through the eyes of a tourist. Would we get lost in the one-way systems? Would we find the public loos? Is it all too expensive?

When I was canvassing the Friary during the General Election in June, I had a chat with a couple who had lived there for forty years. He is a retired craft printer who served his apprenticeship and then a long career with a jobbing printer in The New Canal, setting lead type letter by letter. He collects books about Salisbury. He lent me a copy of 'Salisbury Plain - its Stones, Cathedral City, Villages and Folk', written by Ella Noyes of Sutton Veny in 1913. Many of the features of life she described I can recall from my childhood in the 1950s - such as cattle auctions in the Market Place - but many of them have disappeared.

This remarkable book, published on the eve of The Great War, which changed England for ever, records the fact that the great diarist Samuel Pepys stayed at the Old George in the High Street when he visited Salisbury in 1668. 'Lay in a silk bed, and very good diet', he notes, and the next day, 'paid the reckoning, which was so absorbitant . . .that I was mad and resolved to trouble the mistress about it and get something for the poor.'

In 1913 the 'Journal' was going strong. It was first published by William and Benjamin Collins in about 1730, and printed at Brown's Bookshop at the east end of The New Canal, at Nos. 7, 9 and 11. In 1962 The Journal still occupied No.7 and the long back range of No.11. That year, unbelievably, the houses were demolished. They were found to be of medieval timber-framed construction - but the bulldozers pushed on.

Collins was a famous publisher of books and weekly newspapers. He printed the first edition of Oliver Goldsmith's ,'The Vicar of Wakefield' in this house in 1766 for a bookseller in Paternoster Row in London. This social and political satire described the triumph of rural honesty, kindness and patience over urban values. What is not so well-known is that the Irish playwright, novelist and poet had studied medicine at Dublin and Edinburgh, travelled in Europe, returned penniless and befriended Samuel Johnson. It was Johnson who found the publisher for 'The Vicar of Wakefield' and saved Goldsmith from imprisonment for debt to his landlady. He went on to fame and fortune with histories and dramas including the much-loved 'She stoops to Conquer…'.

In a community where much of our current prosperity depends upon the presentation of our past it is important to look back and take stock. But the challenge always lies in the future, so before the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness sets in and we dive headlong into another winter of frenetic work and bustle, lets all enjoy the benefits of summer - amongst them the Parliamentary Recess which allows even politicians to travel and take stock.

ROBERT KEY MP