Friday 5th November 1982
A cash investment of between £160,000 and £200,000 has turned Mr. John’s Wall’s garage at East Street, Warminster, into what is probably the most sophisticated petrol station in the district, complete with microchip pump technology and the latest line in forecourt merchandising – an Esso shop.
Gone are the workshops and the Ford car sales franchise, replaced by an enormous canopy and an arrangement of fuel pumps designed to accommodate as many customers as possible with the least fuss.
The link between Mr. Wall and Esso began in 1956 when he moved what had originally been his father’s business from the site of the old Corn Exchange in Warminster Market Place to East Street.
William Thomas Wall had started his garage business at the end of the First World War, selling cans of petrol from a base opposite the present Linpac factory at Weymouth Street, Warminster.
W.T. Wall moved to the Corn Exchange site in the Market Place, in 1923, securing an asset whose value was proved some 40 years later. John Wall took over the business when his father died in 1947, and in the 1960s he sold the Market Place site to the supermarket chain Tesco.
Esso’s latest policy, evidently the result of a form of Americanisation, was explained not so long ago by company affairs director Mr. Nigel Groundwater at a conference in Trowbridge. He said that the garage at East Street, Warminster, is among 75 filling stations a year being converted as part of a major modernisation programme; each scheme involving the complete demolition of existing buildings, the installation of bigger storage tanks for fuel, and the introduction of a modular shop.
Thus, Mr. Wall has been given a package deal in which canopy style, pump system, shop size and range of merchandise all come standard. Even the trees behind Mr. Wall’s office, and the ground-cover plants for the parterres were included.
All of this may give the impression that Mr. Wall too has become part of the Esso retail system – a misapprehension that he is anxious to correct. The relationship between Esso and himself will continue to be one of landlord and tenant.
John Wall is well-known for his long involvement with local political life, not only as Chairman of Wiltshire County Council’s Libraries & Museums Committee, but also as a member of Warminster Urban District Council from 1951 to 1972. He was elected to Wiltshire County Council after the 1972 retirement of the late Jack Harraway.