Terence Howes, in the St. George’s (Warminster) Parish Magazine, issue dated November 1998, writes:
For the Catholic community in Warminster the 24th September 1938 must have been a day of mixed emotions. Their Church, built 1922, had just been enlarged, a Presbytery had just been built, the parish had formally been established, and their first parish priest appointed. Yet even as Bishop Lee blessed the enlarged Church (forty years were to elapse before its consecration) war clouds were gathering over Europe. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was commuting to Berchtesgaden, the country home of Adolf Hitler, to negotiate what he thought was an honourable peace deal. Hitler had that very year annexed Austria; everyone knew that that was not the end of his territorial ambitions; war appeared to be imminent. But within a week of the birth of our parish, on 30th September, the Prime Minister, waving “this piece of paper” stepped off his plane from Munich proclaiming that it meant “peace in our time”. The world had suddenly been transformed. Fr. Donal O’Connell and his parishioners, hardly guessing the conflict that was to come within a year, could set about building up the new parish; and this they did with great enthusiasm.