St Thomas a Becket, Salisbury
St Thomas a Becket, Salisbury
St Thomas’s is the Grade I parish church of central Salisbury, Wiltshire, dedicated to Thomas Becket, a fifteenth-century Perpendicular rebuilding famous for its doom painting, in the Diocese of Salisbury.
- Location
- Salisbury, Wiltshire
- Country
- England
- County
- Wiltshire
- City / town
- Salisbury
- Address
- St Thomas Square, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP1 1BA
- Postcode
- SP1 1BA
- Built
- Founded c.1220; largely rebuilt 15th century; tower c.1400
- Architect
- G. E. Street (chancel furnishings, mid 19th century)
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- Thomas
- Diocese
- Salisbury
- Parish
- Salisbury St Thomas and St Edmund
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Perpendicular
- Materials
- Stone, part plastered
- Grid reference
- SU 143 299
- Opening hours
- The church is open from 9am until dusk almost every day.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas
Overview
Historic England records the church as the parish church of New Sarum, probably founded in 1220, enlarged in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with a tower of about 1400 and a substantial fifteenth-century rebuild. The listing describes a picturesque stone building, part plastered, with the tower in an almost detached position and bells formerly from the cathedral belfry. The present church was rebuilt at the expense of Salisbury’s merchants. The parish is Salisbury St Thomas and St Edmund.
Above the chancel arch is a large mid-to-late fifteenth-century Last Judgement, one of the most complete surviving English doom paintings. It was whitewashed in 1593, uncovered and heavily retouched by Clayton and Bell in 1881, and restored again, most recently in 2019. The parish church describes the building as Perpendicular Gothic. Mid-nineteenth-century work in the chancel is by G. E. Street, including sanctuary walls, alabaster reredos, stalls and stone pulpit. Pevsner called the interior “sumptuous”. Other fittings include fifteenth-century paintings in the Lady Chapel and a Samuel Green organ once presented to the cathedral by George III.