Salisbury Cathedral Flower Festival

Salisbury Cathedral Festival of Flowers

Prices include your entry ticket to this special event.

 

The 2025 festival, The Spirit of Water, is a companion piece to the Cathedral’s summer art exhibition, Living Water. Just as the art show explores the power of water, its ability to hold memories and shape the identity of a place, as well as our need to live in balance with this life sustaining force, the Flower Festival takes its inspiration from water in all its different forms – rain, water, ice and more.

 

The festival’s design team is led by the Cathedral’s Creative Director of Flowers, Michael Bowyer MBE, a Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) judge and the president of the South West area of the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies (NAFAS). Michael is joined this year by the talented floral designer Debbie Wadge, a NAFAS National Judge and National Associate of Honour and Susan Branch as their administrator. Salisbury Cathedral is committed to working sustainably.

 

Salisbury Cathedral’s spire is the tallest in Britian. It was added to the Cathedral in the mid-1300s and weighs around 6,600 tons. Today’s spire is around three inches taller than the original as a result of restoration work done in the 1950s. It’s believed that architects at the time might have forgotten to include the mortar in their calculations!

 

Come and see... Our magnificent flowing water font by sculptor William Pye. Britain’s largest cloisters with landscaped garth. The beautiful Prisoner of Conscience window in the Trinity Chapel designed by Gabriel Loire in Chartres, France. The world’s oldest working mechanical clock, which dates back to 1386. The turret clock, which has no face, has ticked more than 4.4 billion times since it was built.

 

It is home to the best preserved of only four surviving original Magna Carta (AD1215) which is listed on the UNESCO ‘Memory of the World’ register. This document inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, American Bill of Rights and the constitutions of many other democratic countries and is housed in a permanent interactive exhibition in our exquisite Chapter House which also has a unique 13 century stone frieze of bible stories in it.

 

The world's oldest working mechanical clock  (AD1386) can is also on permanent display here alongside more contemporary installations such as the spectacular flowing ‘Living Water’ font by William Pye (2008) and the Gabriel Loire's 'Prisoners of Conscience' stained glass window (1980).

 

Add to this the many beautifully carved monuments and tombs, our famous Father Willis Organ and our regular art exhibitions and you have plenty to explore in the unique atmosphere in this ancient place of worship.

 

Plus free time in Salisbury. Superbly situated in southern England's rural heartland, few destinations can match the amazing diversity. Salisbury has plenty of characterful places to see - some dating back to the 13th century - and a wide range of pubs, restaurants and tea rooms. A choice of arts and culture venues complement individual shops and regular street markets, and outside the city you will find charming country towns and villages

 

Salisbury also has Britain’s largest Close (40 hectares) and largest Cloisters and its Quire stalls are the largest and earliest complete set in Britain.

 

Depart 5.30pm.

Salisbury Cathedral