MY ARTICLE on The King and Bishop in last week’s Bygone prompted some interesting replies regarding the Crown Hotel which once stood in the High Street.

It is recorded that prior to the demolition of the hotel in the early 1970s the proprietor, Mr CR Marden, made an exploration of the cobweb-festooned cellar.

The cellar was once a room of a much older building and was about 20 feet below the pavement level with walls which were six feet thick.

At one end there was a large chimney-breast and Mr Marden’s perusal found some interesting items going back a few hundred years.

He found ancient stones built into the walls of the cellar – maybe they came from Old Sarum – old oak beams, scantlings, tapered metal augers, used in barrels before taps were used, and some very old wine in hand-made bottles.

His predecessors of bygone days must have found this cellar a useful wine depository as its temperature apparently did not vary winter or summer.

Records show that the Crown Hotel, once known as the Rose and Crown, began its life as an inn in 1411, when John Goweyn gave to the Procurator and Commonalty of the Church of the Blessed Mary of Sarum (the Cathedral) a certain tenement or inn called ‘le Rose.’

The inn changed hands in 1423, when John Chafyn, a card-maker, of Warminster, granted to a John Paul the tenancy of the building.

The records of the Tailor’s Guild (1470) refer to the Crown Inn, High Street, and in 1624 it is interesting to note that a new house appeared in Bridge Street called ‘The Rose,’ an inn of considerable importance.

After this it seems that the name of the old inn in High Street was changed from The Rose to the Rose and Crown.

I wish all the readers of Bygone Salisbury a happy Christmas and peaceful New Year.