Extract from The Changing Face Of Warminster by Wilfred Middlebrook, published in 1971:
Industry is represented in Pound Street by the malthouse and the greetings card factory. The malthouse was built on the site of a private dwelling house, where Dr. Bleeck was born in 1805. It was a house with beautiful oaken floors and doors, and a handsome staircase. The Bleeck family afterwards lived in the Market Place, and Dr. Bleeck bought an old factory in West Street – now a tenement block it still bears his name.
Daniell tells us that, besides the large trade in wheat and barley, from 1700 to 1800 great quantities of malt were made in Warminster, with more than sixty malthouses at work. There was little malt made in Somerset and Devon, so that there was a constant stream of traffic from these counties to Warminster, with packhorses and mules bringing sacks of coal and returning with sacks of malt. Today there is only one malthouse; this is the large malthouse in Pound Street. A small one in Chinn’s Yard, behind the Market Place, was closed in recent years.
The Pound Street Malthouse carries the name of William Frank Morgan over the door, but for many years it was run by Dr. Edwin Sloper Beaven. William Morgan founded the firm of Morgan and Bladworth, who malted in many old malthouses in the town. The Morgan malthouse was behind Silver Street, being eventually destroyed by fire, and Obelisk Terrace was erected on the site.
Frank Morgan was the son of William, and, besides being closely associated with the Congregational Church, he was for many years the Chairman of the Urban District Council and a great benefactor to the town. It was through the efforts of Frank Morgan over a period of twenty years that a through way was finally opened in Common Close. On his retirement, Frank Morgan was presented with a magnificent set of silver plate, bequeathed on his death to the town for use on civic occasions.
When Dr. Beaven ran the Pound Street Malthouse he also ran the little old malthouse at the rear of Chinn’s Yard, and was delighted to show visitors around this ‘one-man’ malthouse. One old-timer, called William Garrett, used to insist that he was a ‘malter’ and not a ‘malster,’ citing as his reason the terms ‘spinner’ and ‘spinster,’ thus implying that a ‘malster’ was a woman. Just below the Pound Street Malthouse was for many years a little Methodist Mission House, and across the way is Pound Row, leading to West Street.