Arthur Ivor Richard Jones, who was originally from Swansea, once worked for the Great Western Railway but lost a leg due to an accident. About 1937, 1938, he came to Warminster, where he and his second wife, Lilian Jones, ran a café called the Cosy Café at 15 High Street (premises on the George Street side of the Warminster Fish And Fruit Company’s shop). The Jones family lived above the café which closed after the Second World War.
Arthur started doing watch and clock repairing from his High Street premises. When one of his sons, Albert Jones, left the Navy and returned to Warminster he joined his father in the watch-repairing business which they called A. Jones & Son. Arthur’s descendants recall that trade was “pretty good.”
When Arthur gave up watch-repairing he went to live with his daughter Phyllis Foreman and her husband Guy Foreman, at 52 Boreham Field, Warminster. Arthur Jones died at Warminster Hospital on 27th December 1964 and was cremated at Salisbury. He was 68.
Arthur’s son, Albert Jones, went to work at 27 Command REME Workshops, Warminster, as instrument maker. Albert lived at 51 The Dene, Warminster, with his wife Winnie and children Patricia and Keith.
Jones’s former premises at 15 High Street, Warminster, later became Lesken’s television, radio and electrical shop. In more recent times (the early 1990s) the premises were a hairdresser’s salon (Corner Cutters) but they are currently (1998) empty and unoccupied.