From Salisbury Journal 2021

Our Photo this week features Sir Edward Heath who was prime minister from 1970 – 1974. In February 1985, Mr. Heath acquired Arundells, in  Salisbury Cathedral Close where he resided until his death aged 89 in 2005.

In February 1989, Mr. Heath was interviewed by the Sunday Times Magazine had some fine things to say about Salisbury and its people.

Mr. Heath said he fell in love with the city when he was a member of the Oxford University Balliol Players and they came here in 1938 to perform Greek plays. He wrote and played the background music.

“I like to walk around the town during the day,” he told the Times Magazine adding, “There is a great deal of music and repertory theatre and good pubs to visit. Sometimes visitors to the city stare at me, but the people of Salisbury have got used to my presents. It is extraordinarily quiet and peaceful; you wouldn’t think you were in a town, let alone a city. It has Britain’s best cathedral, giving one a sense of community.”

The article also painted an idyllic picture of his life at Arundells. “If the weather is fine I take lunch in the summer house, surrounded by trees, with the sound of the Avon flowing at the bottom of the garden. I also like to entertain a great deal – friends to lunch on Sundays and dinner parties for visiting musicians, artists and politicians and so on.”

The large garden at Arundells was one of his many passions and his trusty gardener would follow through his ideas for the great swathe of open space stretching down to the River Avon. He especially liked to cultivate orchids and had “a splendid one from Cuba, sent by Fidel Castro.”