The plasterwork and oak staircase
The best thing here is not the furniture but the decorated ceilings and the carved oak staircase, Queen Anne work of exceptional quality.
The quiet grey front on Choristers' Green gives nothing away. Behind it are plasterwork ceilings and a carved oak staircase of exceptional quality, among the finest Queen Anne work to survive in an English town house. The house was completed in 1701 in Chilmark stone for Charles Mompesson, gained a brick wing in 1740, passed to the National Trust in 1975 and opened to visitors in May 1977. The address alone earns a detour: it stands inside Salisbury Cathedral Close, minutes from the tallest church spire in Britain. Inside it is small and concentrated rather than grand. The rooms are furnished with 18th- and early 19th-century pieces and are currently dressed to tell the Regency story of the Portman family who lived here; the Turnbull collection of English 18th-century drinking glasses is an important one, shown alongside Derby, Bow, Sèvres and Wedgwood ceramics. Anyone who has seen the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility will recognise the staircase and drawing rooms at once; they stood in for the Jennings house in London. Behind the house a small walled garden with a pergola and a summerhouse tea room is where many visitors end up lingering longest. Be realistic about time: an hour is more than enough, and 45 minutes suits most people. The season runs roughly from mid-March to the start of November, followed by a Christmas opening from 20 November to 22 December, Friday to Tuesday. Hours are 11:00 to 16:00 with Wednesday and Thursday closed, and last entry is half an hour before that. You do not need to book — the National Trust asks visitors simply to arrive on the day, though groups should ring ahead. Adult admission is £11 for house and garden, the garden alone £1, free to National Trust members. There is no car park of its own, so use the city-centre pay-and-display; Salisbury station is half a mile away, about fifteen minutes on foot. With small children, be honest with yourself: wooden floors, narrow stairs, fragile glass on open display, an upper floor reachable only on foot and nowhere sensible to leave a pushchair. It works best as one part of a Salisbury day — the cathedral and its 1215 Magna Carta, one of only four originals to survive, first, this house as the quiet interval, then the half-hour drive out to Stonehenge. If your time in England is short, this is not the house you will regret missing.
The best thing here is not the furniture but the decorated ceilings and the carved oak staircase, Queen Anne work of exceptional quality.
Cases hold the Turnbull collection of 18th-century English drinking glasses, with Derby, Bow, Sèvres and Wedgwood pieces beside them.
A small garden with a pergola behind the house and a tea room in the old summerhouse, where many visitors sit longer than they spend indoors.
Choristers' Green, The Cathedral Close, Salisbury SP1 2EL
If the day is tight, no. It is a small house whose pleasures are detailed rather than dramatic; people who care about interiors and antique glass get a happy 45 minutes, everyone else will find the cathedral and Stonehenge enough. If you are unsure, pay the £1 for the garden and leave it at that.
Not especially. There is no lift and the upper floor is stairs only, though staff can show photographs of the upstairs rooms on a tablet, the displays are fragile glass with no barrier, and there is nowhere sensible to take a pushchair through the rooms. The garden and tea room are the part young children tolerate, and the whole visit need not run past an hour.