It’s a quiet February mid-morning in Salisbury City centre, where locals running errands, basking in the winter sun and strolling the grounds of its nearly 800-year-old cathedral make up the thrum of daily life.
The picture – almost one year after former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench – is of business as usual.
These are the signs of a resilient Salisbury, which is almost back on it feet after being rocked by relentless attention, and some panic, brought on by the Novichok poisonings of the Skripals on March 4. Two Russian GRU officers, Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, have been identified as suspects.
Police appealed for people to come forward with information as recently as Friday, as they continue to piece together an incomplete picture. Some 250 detectives have worked on the investigation, collecting over 11,000 hours of CCTV footage and more than 1,700 statements from the public.
The Skripals survived, but the story took an even more tragic turn when it emerged that two residents of a nearby town had been hit in separate poisoning 10 miles away in Amesbury.
Dawn Sturgess died in July after her partner, Charlie Rowley, found a discarded fake Nina Ricci perfume bottle containing the toxic substance and unknowingly gave it to her. The bottle has still not been found, Scotland Yard said on Friday.
Rowley himself was put in hospital for several weeks. The council is in touch with most victims and their families, while the Skripals’ whereabouts remain unknown for security reasons.
Understandably, the immediate reaction to the poisonings was a mixture of shock and fear.
But one year on, there’s a mix of opinion among locals who have worked to put the criminal act out of their minds.
A cathedral tour guide, who wished to remain anonymous, told HuffPost UK: “Because it happened two times, it was a double-whammy for us.
“Just when things were getting back to normal, another incident happened. So it just knocked everyone and everyone became so fearful.
“But we just have to take each day as it comes, and we listen to news, we’re being assured that people will be alright.”
Advice from Public Health England remains the same – “if you didn’t drop it, then don’t pick it up”.
The tour guide continued: “I was actually sitting on the same bench about three hours before, so I think I was just not believing it when it came on the news.
“So yes, I think like everybody else, I was a bit shocked that a small place like Salisbury should have such a big news item that later, absolutely went international.”
Another local resident stopped to talk as he rushed down the high street. “I haven’t really thought about it recently because it hasn’t been in the news,” he said.
The recovery process – both physical and economic – is very much an ongoing one as various stakeholders from the council to small business owners continue to work hard to get back completely on its feet.
Focusing on recovery and and those impacted has added to the workload, said Alistair Cunningham, a corporate director for growth the council.
He told HuffPost UK: “The public sector doesn’t often get the opportunity to be seen to shine. We hear from the public when the bins are empty, when there’s holes in the road, when something goes wrong, but most of the time, public sector work is unseen in delivering things and I think that’s what has happened in Salisbury.
“The police, fire, military, councils have worked alongside the business community and the wider community to manage this and I think by and large, it’s been a lot of work but actually, the results hopefully are that Salisbury returns to normal.”
Compared with a “quiet” start to 2019, the city was abuzz over Christmas with the seasonal markets and the city’s museum “reporting good business” in December, according to official tourist site Visit Wiltshire.
The annual pantomime, this time Beauty and the Beast, saw its best ever sales with tens of thousands of tickets sold.
But, according to the cathedral guide, the site synonymous with the city suffered “very badly”.
Simon Ward is a photographer and business owner, described the past year as “peaks and troughs”.
“Obviously there were a lot of colleagues in the city centre who were hurt quite a lot financially...from a personal point of view and, certainly from what I’ve seen, the city has been resilient enough with that ‘keep calm and carry on mentality’, but footfall did take quite a knock during the course of the year.”
Visits to the city centre remain a “stubborn” 11% lower since the incidents, and, according to Visit Wiltshire, there are 1 million fewer visits to Salisbury city centre than in 2017.
On Fisherton Street is the Best-One off-license. It is seven minutes’ walk from Castle street, home to the Zizzi restaurant where the Skripals had dined before they were found unconscious near The Maltings shopping area.
“Sales just went down, it almost became a ghost town”
Owner Toks explained the aftermath from behind the counter: “Sales just went down, it almost became a ghost town. People didn’t want to come to Salisbury, for fear of being contaminated.
“Even though it’s been said on telly that people will not be affected in any way, it’s difficult for people to even come around because they didn’t want to go to public places, to the restaurants, they are just too fearful to come to a public place.
“So it really affected the business so much. Some of them couldn’t survive it, quite a few businesses were shut down because they couldn’t survive the loss. We are not doing badly, but we could be better.”
Wiltshire council has been supporting local businesses that were stuck behind the cordon, while others have been propped up by goodwill payments from insurance companies.
Last October, the council told HuffPost UK it was coming up against resistance from some insurance companies that were apprehensive about payouts because they claimed the nature of the incident made losses difficult to cover.
So has much changed?
Cunningham told HuffPost UK: “Some have been very good, some have been less so, but you know what it’s like with insurance claims, it’s an iterative process of providing more info and giving them understanding of what the real impact is. So some positive outcomes and some not positive. So far.”
Yet the city still comes up against roadblocks to recovery. A Russian flag was draped over scaffolding covering the cathedral in February, and the perpetrators still have not been tracked down.
“It doesn’t make it go away, that’s the thing. Just when you think you are moving on,” Ward said.
“I switched on and had a look at things at about a quarter to 10, and there was a post from someone who works at Spire FM that said: ‘would you believe it, there’s a bloody Russian flag hanging from Salisbury cathedral?’
“So again you have a hashtag of #Salisbury, #Novichok, and you just think ’what’s the point? Is it a prank? Is it someone who’s drunk and climbed the scaffolding to put the Russian flag up, is it something a bit more underhand and is it the Russians taunting us and tormenting us? You don’t know the answer to that question.
“It took 13,000 hours to clean up the property on Christie Miller road, and up to 800 specially military personnel were involved in decontamination work”
“The underlying thing is that it just reminds everybody of what happened.”
Thankfully, the city can soon begin to put things behind them. On Friday, Wiltshire council declared the city safe as the clean-up of the Skripal home, the last contaminated site, was wrapped up.
It took 13,000 hours to clean up the property on Christie Miller road, and up to 800 specially military personnel were involved in decontamination work around 12 sites in Salisbury and Amesbury, named Operation Morlop.
Last year’s Spire FM Local Hero Awards were dominated with praise for the response of the emergency services and citizens who rallied round at a critical time.
Abigail McCourt, a teenager who emerged as the first person to help the Skripals when they were found collapsed, was honoured with a lifesaver award.
And this year all eyes will once again be on the city as it leads the nation’s Armed Forces Day celebrations in June, and marks 800 years since the start of the cathedral being built.
Although the media spotlight flickers on Salisbury as the anniversary approaches, Wiltshire Police will not be deploying any more officers than usual and the local mood seems lowkey.
The city is looking forward to new redevelopments, particularly of The Maltings shopping centre, plans which have been in the works for years.
“Salisbury is a beautiful city, a wonderful place to visit, people should not be concerned regarding safety of the city,” Cunningham said.
“The sites are cleaned up, we’ve had 10 million people visiting the city since the incident, it is a good place to come and visit and you can enjoy the cultural heritage and retail. What happened, happened, it’s been dealt with, the city is moving on.”