A COUPLE who sell rare antique books at one of Salisbury’s oldest independent shops will be retiring after 57 years of trading.

John and Judith Head bought their “exceedingly happy shop” on Crane Street back in 1971, having begun trading at Salisbury market in 1958.

John paid £500 for the stall (around £10,000 in today’s money) after leaving the RAF.

Back then, competition for market stalls was fierce, with traders forced to leave if they missed two weeks in a row.

John said: “We had to be there very early in the morning – by 6am – and you were not allowed to close up until seven in the evening.

“If you lost your pitch you would never get it back, it was very popular in those days. It was completely different to how it is now.”

It was by chance they took moved into the niche area of angling and game books after visiting a game fair.

Judith said: “In 1962 we went to a game fair. We went there with my dad and when we got back we asked for a stand for the following year.

“It was so successful it sold out but, at the same time, while we were there I met a gentleman to whom I sold a 1750 Walton’s Compleat Angler, which he had been trying to find for many years.

“He told me he would do me a favour. Three weeks later we started getting letters asking for our angling catalogues and the pile of letters reached about two feet deep.

“Someone then sent us $500 from the US as a retainer on our books. We thought: 'What on earth are they talking about? We do not possess a single fishing book’.

“Then one person wrote saying they saw the article about us in the Fishing Gazette. So we bought a copy and it was by the man, Mr Marston. He was the editor and he had written that we could get any fishing book.”

The couple then travelled across the country buying every fishing book they could, researching the subject every night to become experts. It was then they issued their first catalogue, which sold out.

Their speciality has taken them all over the world to exhibitions in cities including Dubai, Munich, Amsterdam, New York, Las Vegas and Stockholm.

It was at one of these events where they met Princess Anne and at another they sold a book to Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

The most expensive book they have sold was a Thomas Barker, entitled The Art of Angling, which was the first fishing publication written in English. The book, which is one of only three surviving copies in existence, sold to Yale university for £90,000 four years ago nearly 40 years after they bought it.

John said: “It was one of those lucky ones. It was one of the biggest book sellers in the country and they produced a catalogue to which I was reading on the train home from London.

“That night I finished reading it and on the back was two fishing books and I phoned up next day and one was taken but the other was had been wrongly placed under the cookery section. They had 40 orders for it but they couldn’t find it.”

Now the couple, both in their 70s, will look to enjoy retirement, and Zoe Gurr, who has worked for them since 1993, is setting up her own book-selling business.