Category: About Warminster: High Street

The Warminster Fish & Fruit Co.

John Halliday, in a hardback exercise book he titled Warminster Notes, in which he compiled various handwritten notes about Warminster and district for local history slide shows he was giving during the 1980s, penned the following:

Warminster Fish & Fruit Co., run by Mr. Bishop, at High Street, was formerly the Organ Inn. The cellars are still there. Also behind the shop is the inn’s bar with original fireplace and settles. Prior to being a fish and fruit shop it had been a pork butcher’s shop. The butcher’s rail is still on the shop’s ceiling.

Everything Was A Penny A Slab At Sergeant Oborn’s Shop, Warminster

An anecdote by Mary Hatton; from her recollections Sights, Sounds And Smells Of Bygone Days, penned in September 1970:

An appetising smell I have overlooked was from the shop which was part of what is now Heading Mitchell [at the High Street, Warminster]. It must have been a very old shop indeed because my mother knew it when she was a child. It was a very small, dark shop and one had to go down two or three steps to enter. It was kept by Sergeant Oborn and he was a huge man, well over six feet tall. He only sold slabs of rice, peas and bread puddings (all like rocks), and faggots. Everything was a penny a slab. How he made a living I cannot think. You could not buy sliced cooked meat in those days.

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