Wilfred Middlebrook in The Changing Face Of Warminster, first written in 1960, updated 1971, noted:
John Wallis Titt & Co.Ltd.
A really long-established business is represented by the Woodcock Engineering Works of John Wallis Titt And Co. Ltd. John Wallis Titt started the business in Portway, in a building that is still used as a workshop by Curtis And Son, the builders, funeral contractors and monumental masons. Titt moved to Woodcock in 1877, buying Woodcock House and the row of cottages that still adjoins the works. In those days Woodcock Road was mainly a mud track, and old-time employees of the firm recall how they used to hop from one hedgerow to the other in an effort to avoid the deep mud as one went to work at six in the morning. If the bell went before the works’ entrance had been reached, the unlucky workman had to cool his heels in the lane until nine o’clock. A similar practice was in force at the Crockerton Silk Factory in those days, when factory girls were locked out for several hours if they failed to enter the works before the bell went at six.
It was John Wallis Titt who finally made a proper road as far as the works, and it has fallen to the military authorities to carry it through to Boreham Crossroads. Titt was in charge at Woodcock from 1877 to 1903, in which time he built up the works and made a name in this country and abroad as a pioneer of wind engines. One of his earliest wind engines was erected at Boyle Hall, West Ardley, in Yorkshire, for generating electricity for lighting the mansion. Another large windmill and pumping plant was erected for the Italian Government at Margherita di Savoia, and was used for raising sea water for distribution in vapourising beds for the production of salt. With a wind velocity of around eighteen miles per hour, this installation could supply nearly 284,000 gallons of water per hour.
It is also interesting to recall that the firm of John Wallis Titt sunk the wells for the Heytesbury Waterworks in 1892. Lady Heytesbury turned the first sod on Bowlesbury Knoll with a solid brass spade with a boxwood handle inscribed ‘Presented to Lady Heytesbury on the occasion of turning the first sod of the Heytesbury Waterworks, July 12th, 1892. John Wallis Titt, Engineer.’ The sources of this ambitious scheme were detected and marked by a water diviner carrying a forked hazel rod.