Interpreting the Mosaic

The ditty round the outside was pinned to the noticeboard of the Anchor & Hope pub.

1. ‘Go to Mould’s when you’re hungry’

Sydney and Lucy Mould ran a restaurant at No 64 Winchester Street until the mid 1930s. As his advert boasts, Sydney could provide your main meal of the day for a mere sixpence. The house speciality was faggots and peas.

2. ‘The Anchor When You’re Dry’

The Anchor & Hope is one of Salisbury’s oldest pubs, dating from the Middle Ages, it had a notorious reputation as ’a rough boozer’!

3. ‘Go To Churchill’s When You’re Tired’

Churchill’s Lodging House was at 65 and 67 Winchester Street. The house extended back, parallel to Greencroft Street, for about 50 yards. It had over SIXTY small rooms – but no bath and only basic toilet facilities. It was known as a ‘Common Lodging House’ providing the cheapest possible lodgings for the poorest possible lodgers.

4. Sweetshop and Bakery.

Ken Edwards, born Greencroft Street 1944 “Just down Winchester Street a little bit…was Mrs Topham’s a little shop which sold everything…it was one of these places, just crowded with stuff, very narrow, I remember it was quite a high counter…where she used to keep all the sweets but everything else was just everywhere.”
Marshall’s bakery is remembered by many, especially Jean Moroney whose mother drove the delivery van in the War years. “During the War bread was rationed, but I can’t remember being very short of bread…probably because my mother was the Baker’s
delivery driver!”

5. Children playing.

Phyllis Maple, born Rampart Road in 1919. “…when we were children we could play in the road ‘cause there was only horses and carts then, you get out of the way of the road when they pass by and then you can play, you play again.”  Charles Humby, born Milford Street in 1923 “Oh yes, we used to make to our own plays, play marbles in the street…put your heel down, drill a hole in the street, get a good hiding for it! It was really good fun, we used to make it.”

6. Traffic.

Ken Edwards, “In the sixties, when people started to get cars and that, it was always solid all the way from the market all the way up Winchester Street, all the way along London Roadand some ladies along there used to make tea and take it out and sell tea ‘cause that’s how long they were stuck.” Animal traffic was driven to and from the Market.

7. Steamroller.

37 Greencroft Street was home to Joe Ackerman, driver of Salisbury’s steamroller – a prominent machine in the days before tarmacking, when most of the streets were of tightly impacted gravel and needed continual refurbishing. Our ‘unmade road’ is made of broken pots from Julie Ayton’s pottery in Winchester Street.

8. Titanic.

Joe, the steamroller driver and his wife Fanny had two sons Frank and Albert who lived in Southampton with their young families. Stewards on the Atlantic passenger liners, both sadly, died with the ‘Titanic’.Eileen O’Leary grew up at the Cyclists’ Rest. In her late teens she was a cashier in the Silver Street branch of Thomas Lipton’s, where she met and married one of the firm’s high-fliers, Neal McNamee. In 1912 he and Eileen were selected to run a major part of Lipton’s operation in the U.S.A. and set sail on the ‘Titanic’ on its ill-fated maiden voyage. Eileen’s body was recovered, but buried at sea. Neal’s was never found.

9. The Winchester Cyclists’ Rest.

In the 1900s, No 80 Winchester Street was an establishment called The Winchester Cyclists’ Rest. Run by an ex-soldier called Richard O’Leary and his wife Minnie, it offered a wide range of services to the passing traveller – particularly the bicycling traveller.