Extract from The Changing Face Of Warminster by Wilfred Middlebrook, published in 1971:
Like the Parish Church Of St. Denys, this Chapel Of St. Laurence has been practically re-built from its foundations and restored out of all recognition during its long and chequered existence. The dedication of this ancient Chapel of Ease is to St. Laurence or Lawrence, Archdeacon to Sixtus, Bishop Of Rome, when the latter was martyred in A.D. 258. Three days later St. Laurence himself was put to death on a red-hot gridiron, and his festival in the English calendar is 10th August.
The Chapel was built by the Mauduits, Lords of the Manor of Warminster, in Plantagenet times, and Henry The Third granted to William Mauduit a fair, to be held on the vigil, the festival and the morrow of St. Laurence. St. Laurence’s Fair was held throughout the centuries but in 1783 there was a double hanging on Sutton Common; Matthew Gardner and John Wheeler being publicly executed for the murder of Benjamin Rebbeck on 11th August. Thousands of people flocked to see this free spectacle, before coming into Warminster for the Fair, which then became known as the Hanging Fair. This three-day fair has been allowed to lapse, the present Warminster fairs being held in April and October.
The Chantry of St. Laurence, endowed with twenty nine acres of land, was built in St. Laurence Mead in 1290, and a house provided for a chaplain in Curt or Court Street. Later, the endowments proved insufficient and the inhabitants of Warminster supplemented the chaplain’s stipend, ensuring regular services until the time of the Reformation.
It seems rather strange these days, with good clean roads and footpaths, and a few short cuts to the Parish Church from the centre of the town, but in those days it was felt that the Parish Church was too far away. An account of 1565 reads: “The said Chapel was – and yet is a very fayre howse with a fayre tower and steeple, but the East Window obstructed by a little howse belonging to it, being situate in the very harte of the Market Place, and the Church being a large quarter of a mile from it, and no howse within a good bow shot of the Church.”
This commentary was written after the Reformation, when the old Chapel was gradually falling into ruin. Edward The Sixth granted the Chapel Of St. Laurence to Richard Robertes of London in 1549 – all except the bells and the lead. Thus for some forty years the Chapel was doomed to being spoiled, the retention by the Crown of the lead alone saving the fabric from utter ruin. The graveyard was let for building sites, and some half dozen lofty houses were built along the High Street in front of the Chapel which could only be reached by a long and narrow alley, completely hiding it from view.
By 1575 Thomas Wardoure owned the property and the leading inhabitants of Warminster banded together and purchased the ruined chapel for £36, restoring it in a rough fashion and once more enjoying regular services, no longer by a resident chaplain but under the ministration of the Vicar Of Warminster.
In 1592 the three survivors of the original six members of the Committee of Purchase drew up indentures conveying the property to twelve trustees or feoffees in perpetuity, and there are eight feoffees responsible for the maintenance of the Chapel to this day. In January 1950 an appeal was launched by the feoffees for the sum of one thousand pounds for the restoration of the Chapel; the names of the feoffees being as follows: Mr. H. H. Barber, Mr. A. H. Coates, the Revd. Canon Colson, M.A., Mr. Hedley P. Curtis, Dr. R. W. Graham-Campbell, F.R.C.S. (Edin.), M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., Mr. H. F. Knight, Mr. W. R. Marshall, M.A., Mr. W. H. Wickham, with Mr. H. Pallister Clarke as the Steward.
A description of the early restoration in 1575, written by the Vicar Of Warminster in 1855, makes depressing reading. “The Chapel existed from that time,” wrote the Rev. A Fane, “Hidden from without, hideously repaired within, with four roundheaded windows utterly defying the taste and beauty of the tower; the inside a gathering of lofty and unsightly pews; the tower enclosed for fire buckets, coke, coal, and filth; the clock and bell turret in a sad state of decay; the outside, as it may now be seen, partly stuccoed, partly black, partly white; the East Window wholly closed; no altar rails, no organ – in a word, the little Chapel of St. Laurence might rejoice that the outside encroachments prevented the passerby from inspecting the interior defacements; such as the state of this ancient building, devoted now for nearly five centuries to God.”
From 1631 the curfew was sounded at eight o’clock each evening by the “Towne Bell’ in St. Laurence’s steeple, a custom that continued without a break until 1940, when the fear of enemy invasion caused all church bells to be muted, to be used only as an invasion alarm. At the end of the nineteenth century Mrs. House rang the bell by a rope that descended from the belfry directly into the sexton’s house. Since the beginning of the present century, up to 1940, Mrs. Amy Penn and Mrs. Annie Penn have rung the Town Bell for curfew, for services and, occasionally, for fire alarms.
The son of Mrs. House awoke on an early morning in December 1897 to find a huge slab of masonry across the foot of his bed; the upper stages of the tower had been completely destroyed by lightning! Mr. House, who still lives in the shadow of St. Laurence steeple, but not on the premises, was well over 90 years of age when I found him splitting logs in his woodshed. He still recalls many an occasion when he had to run downstairs in his nightshirt to ring the fire bell.
In 1657 a new Town Bell was cast by John Lott in Common Close, the rich throwing half-crowns into the molten metal and the poor throwing in their precious sixpences, “which makes of it such a soft, silvery sound.” This bell lasted over a hundred years, being melted up in 1783, new cast and re-hung at a cost of £24. The nave was rebuilt from the foundations in 1725, with four roundheaded windows “in barbarous fashion of George The Third.” The steeple had been repaired in 1642.
The Clock
A clock was put in the tower in 1765, made by Thomas Rudd and bought by public subscription for £30; still in use, this clock has no face but chimes the quarters on three bells, the chimes being added in 1786.
The St. Laurence Chapel Of Today
In 1855-1856 the Chapel was restored to the condition in which we see it today, through the efforts of the Rev. A. Fane, Vicar Of Warminster at that time. The houses hiding the Chapel from the High Street were pulled down, a new roof with a parapet was raised on the nave, and battlements added to the oblong tower. New windows were inserted and a north porch added; the west window was dedicated to David Kinnier, who left a hundred pounds to the Chapel. The east window depicts Our Lord In Glory with St. Stephen and St. Laurence, while the north and south windows represent Faith and Prayer, with the Good Shepherd and Elijah in one, Our Lord and Moses in the other. The newly-restored Chapel was re-opened on 22nd January 1857, by the Bishop Of Salisbury.
It is a simple chapel equipped with plain pews bordering a central aisle, a timber and plaster roof, plain cream walls and a curtained reredos beneath an east window that can never admit the sunlight because of other buildings that crowd upon it. The darkened east wall is brightened by a beautiful altar cloth of brilliant mauve and purple enriched with silver motifs. On the south wall is a framed panel of prints from frescoes by Fra Angelica in the Vatican at Rome, depicting the life of St. Laurence in five scenes, from his ordination to his martyrdom. It is interesting to note that the spelling of his name is given in both forms on these prints, Laurence and Lawrence.
The Organ
Facing the north door is a small pipe organ, an ancient but lovely instrument that was built, according to the Rev. A. Fane, by a deaf-mute of Warminster called Nelson Hall. In 1954 the well-known church organ builders of London, Messrs. N. P. Mander Ltd., made a report on the St. Laurence organ. One of the few Scudamore organs which had been left unaltered, they said, and a pity if it were dismantled. Worth not more than about £25, it would cost at least £90 for complete restoration, plus £65 for a Discus electric blower; rather prohibitive for a chapel that is so little used.
The maker of this little organ, Nelson Hall, started his unique business in the neighbouring village of Upton Scudamore; and in quite a number of churches in the district there are still “Scudamore” organs to be found. Nelson Hall the organ builder eventually moved from Upton Scudamore to Emwell Street, Warminster, where he carried on his business for a considerable time.
The Tower
The arch of the west door of the tower dates from the time of Henry The Seventh, but the greater part of the tower has been renewed several times; the upper stages were completely destroyed by lightning on 15th December 1897. The tower arch is huge by comparison with the size of the little chapel; an arch that covers a modern font and is curtained off from the nave. Beneath the tower is an old font that was discovered in the tower, with an 18th century bowl and base.
Octavius Bertram Chambers
The name of O. B. Chambers is well-known to older residents of Warminster, his memory being perpetuated for many years by the four-foot clock that once adorned the premises he occupied in the Market Place. This clock was reputedly brought from the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851. .
Octavius Bertram Chambers had the duty of keeping the Town Clock in St. Laurence’s Chapel in perfect time. One evening he climbed the tower stairway as usual to wind the old, faceless clock of St. Laurence. Being a long time gone, Mr. Chambers was sought, and there in the clock room they found him dead. After winding the clock to set time on its forward march he himself had relinquished time and entered eternity.
Recent Events
The removal of the houses that once concealed St. Laurence has left a pleasant open space where one can sit awhile and watch the ever-increasing road traffic of a modern Warminster. High railings were removed in recent years, and two seats have been provided at this vantage spot. These seats were presented to the town as the result of a successful “Beat Your Neighbour” television contest in 1963. For a long time the Warminster Gardening Society helped to keep this little plot a thing of beauty, a task now carried out by the Town Council.
It is interesting to record that the first St. Laurence wedding in living memory was held on the 16th of March 1970, when Miss Sarah Grace Butcher of Warminster became the wife of Signor Giovanni Cazzaniga of Italy. As St. Laurence is one of the few churches in England owned by a town and not by church authorities, a special licence had to be granted by the Archbishop Of Canterbury. The reason for this unusual choice was the fact that the Chapel Of St. Laurence is non-denominational, the groom a Catholic and the bride Church Of England. The Scudamore organ was played by Mr. K. Atkins of Warminster Congregational Church. Another most unusual feature of this unique wedding was the guard of honour that formed outside the church. Employees of R. Butcher And Son, wearing white protective clothing and yellow safety helmets, formed an archway of long strips of glass and glazier’s tools, in honour of the bridegroom, who is a master glazier in his native Sovico.