In Christ Church, Warminster, The First 150 Years, a booklet published in October 1980, to celebrate the 150th birthday of Christ Church, the Rev. John C. Day (Vicar) wrote:
The Churchyard
Although the church was opened in 1831, it was another year before the churchyard received its first burial and this was a stranger to the town. On August 24th, 1832, a man named George Wetherall arrived from Bath and put up at the Drum And Monkey inn (now the Weymouth Arms) in Emwell Street. While there he took seriously ill and is said to have died within hours of the dreaded Asiatic Cholera. Legend has it that he was buried in the south-east corner of the new churchyard.
The original churchyard wall on the east side is still marked by the low wall running north to south from Upper Marsh Road. The new churchyard was annexed much later, partly in 1871 when the chancel was built and more at the turn of the century for new burying ground.
Churchyards are interesting if not always happy places, for they are often a fund of history as well as a place where nature is less disturbed than in the open countryside.
People from time to time comment on the iron graves in our churchyard. These monuments enjoyed a vogue in Victorian England and were somewhat cheaper than working in stone. The two coffin shaped ones are rare and unusual. It is thought that they were made in the Warminster ironworks of William Dutch.
Also worthy of note is the large Cedar tree on the main entrance path. An exoert informs the author that in his opinion this tree is more than 250 years old.
In the past few years we have tried to clear parts of the churchyard, removing old and untended kerbstones and planting various parts of God’s acre with new shrubs, trees, daffodil and crocus bulbs, in an attempt to make it, not a place of sadness, but one of joy and peace with the flowers and trees speaking of new life rather than of death.