A HISTORIC horse trough that disappeared during the redevelopment of Salisbury’s council offices has been returned to its place of honour.

The trough, engraved with the quotation from Proverbs “Open thy mouth for the dumb”, is back in Bourne Hill gardens, where it is expected to be planted with flowers.

It seems an official moved it to keep it safe during construction work, and it then lay hidden among undergrowth at the back of a private car park in Endless Street, where it was eventually uncovered, with the old St Edmund’s Church clock leaning up against it, after inquiries by the Civic Society’s Alan Clarke.

The much-travelled trough is one of two erected by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough Association that gave rise to a recent article in the Civic Society’s newsletter.

It dates from April 1887 and was first installed in the Market Place (referred to in contemporary archives as the Market Square).

It cost £54 and was sent down by rail from London to an R.G. Wilson, who it is suggested may have been the borough engineer.

Over the years it was moved around the Market Place, then to a spot near the former Infirmary, and up to the old children’s hospital play area at Odstock, before ending up at Bourne Hill.

Along the way it lost a granite dog trough which sat underneath it, its supports and a drinking fountain from one end – all of which the Society hopes someone has retained, perhaps as part of a garden rockery, so that they may be rediscovered.

The second trough, dating from 1905, sits next to the old entrance to St Paul’s Church, close to its original location at the junction of Wilton Road and Devizes Road.