Category: About Warminster: Barley Close

Danny Howell writes:

Barley Close is the name of a private housing estate between Boreham Road and St. John’s Road, Warminster. It is a cul-de-sac. It is so named because it was built on the site of the Guinness Barley Research Station (formerly Dr. E.S. Beaven’s barley nursery (1895-1941). Dr. Beaven produced his very own Plumage Archer barley on this site which yielded up to 20% more grain to the acre than any other barley at the time. Guinness took over the site when Dr. Beaven died in 1971 and carried on with research growing test plots of barley until the 1970s when they moved to Codford. Houses were built on the site as an extension of the Prestbury Drive and St. John’s Road housing developments. Vehicular access to Barley Close is from St. John’s Road. There is a footpath from Barley Close to Boreham Road.

Monday 13th October 2025

From the MINUTES of the Planning Advisory Committee
of Warminster Town Council,
held on Monday 13th October 2025 at 7.00pm
at
Warminster Civic Centre, Sambourne Road, Warminster BA12 8LB.

Membership:
Cllr Allensby (West) Vice Chairman *
Cllr J Kirkwood (Broadway) *
Cllr Carter (West) A
Cllr Lee (Broadway) *
Cllr Hawker (West) *
Cllr Robbins (East) *
Cllr Keeble (West) Chairman *

Key: * Present A Apologies AB Absent

In attendance:
Officers: Tom Dommett (Town Clerk), Judith Halls (Deputy Town Clerk).

Attendees:
Visiting Councillors: Cllr Stephen Kirkwood
Members of the press: None
Members of the public: One

PL/2025/07283 7 Barley Close, Warminster, BA12 9LX
Two storey side extension, rear two storey and single storey rear extension and front bay extension and internal alterations.
It was resolved that there was no objection to the application.

Extract from The Changing Face Of Warminster by Wilfred Middlebrook, published in 1971:

The Guinness Barley Research Station.
Another business, discreetly hidden behind palatial dwellings on the south side of Boreham Road, until 1968, was the Guinness Barley Research Station, now transferred to Codford. Lord Iveagh, writing in 1959, about field testing, malting and brewery trials, recalled that in 1945 Guinness took over from Dr. Beaven’s trustees his Warminster nursery, with the intention of carrying on the work and tradition that had become associated with the name of Dr. E.S. Beaven.

Some of the earliest British work on induced mutations in barley breeding was done at Warminster, as part of the continuing effort to combine agriculturally desirable characters and brewing quality in the same barley.

The Warminster research station was equipped to malt the produce on these trials on any desired scale with malts that could be brewed in a miniature brewery. From the earliest days of field trials of barley it had been objected that hand-planted crops, grown under cages to protect them from birds, could not compare favourably with normal agricultural practice. Here at Warminster, a full-scale combine drill was adapted to drill small quantities seed in small-scale trials, which were protected by an electrical bird-scaring device. The name of this unique enterprise is now perpetuated by a new housing project called Barley Close.