Place Name
Salisbury Court and nearby Salisbury Square mark the site of the medieval palace of the bishops of Salisbury who owned land in the parish as early as the 12thCentury. The property, where the bishops would stay when summoned to attend Parliament, or on other business, was the largest and most important in the district. It stood just to the south of today’s St Bride’s Passage and its grounds extended down to the River Thames. It appears on Ralph Agas’s 1561 woodcut map and this street was the main carriage entrance, the square was its central courtyard. In 1564, Bishop John Jewel sold the house to Sir Richard Sackville, father of Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset – hence Dorset Buildings and Dorest Rise which lead out of the square. The property was briefly known as Sackville Place. The house was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and not rebuilt. Salisbury Court represented the boundary wall between the houses and garden and the Bishop of Salisbury’s manor.