Adrian Phillips, in the book The Warminster Trail, compiled for the Warminster Festival 1989, and published by Aris & Phillips Ltd., wrote:
What changed everything [in Warminster] was the coming of the army who coveted the open spaces of Salisbury Plain for training.
In the twentieth century the main employer and certainly the mainstay of the tradesmen [in Warminster] has been the army, whose School of Infantry, with a demonstration battalion and R.E.M.E. workshops, have contributed greatly to the prosperity of the town as you see it today.
Warminster is, as you can imagine, sensitive on the subject of defence cuts.