Extract from The Changing Face Of Warminster by Wilfred Middlebrook, published in 1971:
As previously described in connection with the Avenue, a barn in Beastleaze was first used for worship in 1687. This place of service was superseded in 1704 by the erection of the Old Meeting in North Row; a substantial building still standing, bearing the title “Girls British School.’ This has been named as the original Old Meeting, but this seems hardly likely to me. This school is now used by the Wiltshire County Council Department Of Further Education.
Nonconformity preaching was a risky business in those far-off days of the Restoration after Cromwell. Edward Buckler of Boreham was Chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, but when the monarchy was restored he saw his brother, John Buckler, languishing in Fisherton Gaol for preaching the Gospel.
The Old Meeting started as a Presbyterian movement, following the establishment of the Scottish Presbyterian Chapel in 1566 at Horningsham, when Longleat House was being built. Later it tended to favour Unitarian doctrines, and the congregation gradually dwindled away until it died out in 1860 and the Old Meeting House was sold. The British School for Girls, first established in Ash Walk, removed to Common Close in 1837, and was finally transferred to the old Unitarian Chapel in 1874.
The Langleys were an old Warminster family, named in parish registers of the early seventeenth century. An old chalice, dated 1682, bears the name of John Langley as churchwarden at the Minster Church, but he later favoured the Nonconformists, and bequeathed £400 to the Trustees of the Old Meeting House. The interest on this money was to be given every Christmas Day to persons attending worship there, to be transferred to sixty-four poor parishioners – who would get five shillings each – if the Old Meeting House was disbanded, which it eventually was. John Langley was the uncle of Mr. Temple, who inherited from him his Bishopstrow estate.
John Pearce, the grandfather of William Morgan the brewer, lived in Meeting House Lane, and for sixty years he and a few friends conducted brief religious services at his home every Thursday and Sunday night. John Pearce died in 1809.