Danny Howell, in the book Yesterday’s Warminster, published in 1987, noted:
James Bott Kennard (1870-1943) had commenced his partnership with Mr Wilson, as grocers and provision factors, at 14 Market Place, Warminster, at the turn of the century [circa 1900]. Previously, Mr Wilson had been in partnership with a Mr Mayo, with the Market Place store and another shop at 1 West Street, Warminster.
Jimmy Kennard was a member of the Warminster Hospital Committee of Management, served on the Warminster Urban District Council between 1921 and 1924, and was a people’s warden at Christ Church, Warminster, for 18 years until 1941. In July 1943 he poisoned himself with coal gas in the bathroom of his home ‘whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed’. He had been ill for some time and had worried about the extra responsibility of running the grocery business with the difficult days of food rationing during the Second World War.
The business was run afterwards by his son, Cyril James Kennard (died June 1978), who was born in one of the rooms above and behind the shop, which were once the family’s home. He was educated at Canford School, Wimborne, and he began his working career with Lloyds Bank, first at Fleet and later at Salisbury, before returning to Warminster to take over the shop when his father died. Cyril lived at Elmfield, 10 Elm Hill, Warminster, which was built especially for him and his wife. She was formerly Miss Mollie Long, the daughter of a Chitterne farmer; and Cyril and Mollie were married in the mid-1930s. Cyril retired in March 1973 when he sold the business to the present proprietor, Peter Mead.
The shop still trades as Wilson & Kennard in the Market Place, Warminster, and still retains a copy of the staff rules, handwritten by Jimmy Kennard’s wife Mary. They read:
1. Assistants are required to be obliging to customers and to wait upon them in a polite and straight forward manner.
2. Customers must not be kept waiting at the counter longer than is absolutely necessary and are to be waited upon quickly but are not in any case to be hurried.
3. Assistants are to be most particular in taking cash and in giving change, all cash taken to be plainly and correctly marked on and put in the check till. Should any mistake occur in marking on the amount immediate attention of one of the principals to be called to same. No conversation or remarks to other assistants allowed when at the till.
4. Assistants requiring goods are to ask for them at the counter and are not allowed to put up same for themselves.
5. All wages are paid weekly. Wages are not paid to assistants absent from business through illness.
6. Hours of business open every morning at 8 a.m. One hour allowed for dinner and three quarters of an hour for tea. The above must be strictly adhered to.