Andrew Houghton in his book Before The Warminster Bypass, published November 1988, noted:
Each period has its own pattern of roads: not always the one which the people of that time need, nor what they want, but perhaps the pattern they deserve. Routes change, because they serve settlements which are themselves “mobile”, changing not just their social and economic status but also their location. At Sutton Veny, for example, the centre of settlement for thousands of years was to the south around the church of St. Leonard (ST 908415), with Neolithic and Bronze Age burial mounds in the fields to the south-east, and Medieval house platforms along Duck Street. By the 19th century, however, the focus of the settlement had moved north, and in 1868 St. Leonard’s was finally abandoned to become a silent ruin.