Wilfred Middlebrook, in The Changing Face Of Warminster, first written in 1960, updated in 1971, noted:
A broad military highway called Battlesbury Road links Boreham Barracks and the R.E.M.E. Workshops with the School Of Infantry on the Imber Road. The public footpath from Boreham Field to Battlesbury has been retained, and one can still roam over this lofty and impressive prehistoric stronghold. The R.E.M.E. Workshops occupy what was once called Beggar’s Bush, an old place-name connected with Morley Field, alongside the railway north of Woodcock.
Perhaps my most embarrassing moment was during the last War when I had been for a walk along Imber Road and over Battlesbury. Returning to the old railway bridge that led to Boreham, I was here confronted by an American sentry. He was guarding a railway siding that led to the Workshops, and refused to let me pass, which meant another long walk all the way back to the Imber Road.
Battlesbury can still be reached by a footpath through Boreham Barracks, or along Imber Road and up Sack Hill. This bold hill with its remarkable entrenchments makes a striking picture as viewed from Warminster, especially from the top of Weymouth Street or some similar height, and is awe-inspiring when viewed at close quarters, with its strange aura of a dim and distant past long before the birth of Warminster.
Battlesbury is a contour camp, controlled by the shape of the hill, with multiple ramparts that used to be much higher. Late Bronze Age and early Iron Age materials have been unearthed on the site. One of the smaller barrows contained the skeletons of two people, the head of one reclining on the breast of the other. It was a settlement in early Neolithic times; a chief stronghold in Celtic times; was much farmed on its terraces or lynchets in Saxon times, and has been cornland for many years. During the last War there was the singular spectacle of seeing Battlesbury in the hands of American soldiers, using it as a base to fire trench mortar shells across Warminster Down to Imber Clump.
In prehistoric times the east gate was reached by ascending the slope from the site of the present plantation, where a series of terraces face Norton Bavant; then came a “trap door” formed by a huge rampart. This, properly stockaded, formed the outpost. The east gate is now an opening between high ramparts, with a towering mound on the right that is marked on the maps as a barrow. Inside the gate was a kidney-shaped village, lined by shallow, straight depressions suggestive of streets of wattle and daub houses or huts. There were about twenty-six streets in all. The west gate was the exit to downland, leading along the Ridgeway of Salisbury Drove eastward, and to Bratton Castle northward.