Adrian Phillips, in the book The Warminster Trail, compiled for the Warminster Festival 1989, and published by Aris & Phillips Ltd., wrote:
The United Church came into being in 1984, when the Methodist and United Reform Churches joined in a physical and spiritual union; this building having formerly belonged to the Methodists.
There has been a church on this site for several centuries, with some evidence that an earlier meeting place was disbanded in 1776 because of persecution of the Methodists.
A new church was built in 1804 and the present building erected in 1861.
The roots of Methodism in the town stretch back before 1753, when Warminster was first visited by travelling preachers, probably drawn by the evil reputation of Warminster “Common”, for it was there that they preached. Today that area is a pleasant residential district on the Southern outskirts of the town, but in those days was renowned throughout the West Country and beyond as a hot-bed of vice and crime.
After three years the preachers moved their meetings into the town, but suffered persecution. They begged John Wesley to visit Warminster, and on October 3rd 1758 he preached in the Tanyard, situated just off George Street, up Portway, near the present Portway Surgery. Even so, meetings were discontinued.
But in 1770 Warminster is mentioned as “a new place with 14 members’. More persecution followed, which included breaking the pulpit and stools, turning a fire hose on the preacher, and throwing a viper at him. So once again, in 1776, services were abandoned.
But the Methodists did not give up and resumed normal service again, in 1780, which led to the building of the church. This was modernised in 1976 with the addition of a new porch, and more recently the stained glass window of “The Good Shepherd’ was brought from the abandoned United Reform Church in The Close and installed here. It is fitting that it should figure in this volume as it is exactly 100 years old in this Warminster Festival year.