This building constructed in the garden of the Vicars Choral around 1660 is called "Fielding House" today. Its association with Henry Fielding the novelist and playwright stems from the 1730`s when it was occupied by the Widow Craddock and her daughters. Friends of James Harris III at No 15 across the road, Charlotte Craddock the youngest of the three daughters married Henry Fielding. We are told that Charlotte suffered a disfiguring accident when she fell from a carriage and the wheel passed over her nose. Dr Goldwyre, an eminent surgeon in his day, who lived next door at No 13, operated on her but she was compelled to wear a mask. Unmistakably the heroine Sophie, in Fieldings great novel "Tom Jones", Charlotte was one of the young ladies who made the Salisbury Assembly Rooms in the High Street the fashionable meeting place of the early 18th century.

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Text by John Bushell - Photographs by Roger Croft
Extracts from the Salisbury Cathedral Close Guide - © Copyright, Close Publications 1997