September 1999
Warminster In The 20th Century by Celia Lane and Pauline White, published by Warminster History Society. September 1999.
Review by Danny Howell (Warminster’s Resident Local Historian):
In 1995 the Warminster History Society decided to produce a book documenting the last 100 years in Warminster, as a way of celebrating the millenium and bringing Daniell’s History Of Warminster (1879) up to date. A commendable thought but oh, oh dear, what must have seemed a very good idea at the time has turned out to be very much like the Curate’s Egg – only good in parts. Indeed, Warminster In The Twentieth Century, by Celia Lane and Pauline White, could well be subtitled “A Catalogue Of Errors!”
To start with, people’s names are, all too often, given incorrectly. Diana Turner, of the Baby Shop in George Street, is “Diane” (page 377), Major John has had his surname pluralised to “Johns” (page 171), the Reverend J.J. Daniell is shortened to “Daniel” (page 309), Ernie Weeks, the Station Road cafe proprietor has become “Weekes”; George Mundy, the Manager of the Capital & Counties Bank, is referred to as “Munday” (page 331); and Mr. A.Bazley of Boreham Farm is mistakenly Bazeley (page 197). These are just six of the many mispelt first names and surnames that crop up in this book.
Place names suffer just as badly in the hands of Lane and White. The Teasels residential estate is, according to them, the “Teazles” (page 97), Hillbourne Close (as signposted at Copheap Lane) is recorded as “Hillborne” (page 184), and Oxendean has become “Oxendene” (page 233). Sadly, these are not the only examples.
Perhaps it’s being trivial to refer to this type of error, annoying as it is to the descendants and families of the people, or the residents of the places concerned, but if Lane and White can’t get these right, can they be relied on to be accurate with other things? Unfortunately they can’t.
In the section on the Police, we are told, on page 218, that “In 1882, Sergeant Enos Molden was shot dead by John Gurd at the entrance to Longleat and was buried at Christ Church.” What rubbish! Sergeant Molden was shot on 12th April 1892, and is buried at St Denys’ (The Minster) Churchyard, where his grave is marked by a memorial stone complete with an informative epitaph. How did Lane and White allow this double-gaff to get into print? Well, they acknowledge Paul Sample’s booklet The Oldest And The Best, The History Of The Wiltshire Constabulary 1839-1989, in their list of references. Paul Sample made the mistake and Lane and White simply copied it, thus compounding it. They obviously accepted their written sources at face-value and didn’t bother to check the information.
Lane and White have a lot of trouble with dates throughout their book. 1967 is given (on page 12) as the year Gateway opened, when it actually opened in 1964! We are told (on page 327) Mr O’Malley took over Everett’s grocery shop, at 4 Market Place, “around 1923/4.” Wrong again! Had our two historians done a little research they would have discovered that O’Malley acquired the business in November 1919. Strange too that Lane and White, who are members of the Warminster History give 1972 (on page 12) as the year the History Society was formed. Wrong yet again! The inaugural meeting was actually held in 1970. And so on. There really are far too many mistakes concerning dates in this book.
Worse still, there appears to be some distortion of the truth in places. For example, the list of Council Chairmen and Mayors (page 404) credits Peter Gough serving as Mayor for one term only (1988/89). He was, in fact, a Mayor on two occasions; an even more remarkable achievement when you consider how he overcame his disability. He died during his second term (1991/92), but this is not mentioned. Maybe the authors thought the circumstances of his death a bit too much for their readers and decided the best way of not having to mention this was to simply put he was mayor only once.
Similarly, in the section on doctors, we are not told of Dr Payne’s fall from grace (even though the reason for his resignation was a big talking-point in Warminster during the 1990s). There is, of course, a danger in recording the misdemeanours of people still alive, and Lane and White must have chose to shy away from such things. Unfortunately though, there is another danger arising from that – history is portrayed through “rose-coloured spectacles” and not really as it was.
The “unsavoury” aside, it has to be said another of the book’s downfalls is that most of the information in the book is very scant or patchy. No doubt the authors will say there wasn’t enough space to go into detail, but if that was the case perhaps it was foolish to try and chronicle 20th century Warminster in a single volume. The result is certainly a very incomplete account. Some subjects fare better than others but throughout, the lack of anything “concrete” all too often gives the wrong impression. For example, in the chapter on schools, in the section on New Close School (page151), we are told when the school opened in 1952 a Mr. H. Brodie was the head, and a few sentences further on, we are given some information by Mr. A. Folker, who was the head from 1979 to 1984. Readers could perhaps get the impression that Folker succeeded Brodie as headmaster. No mention of made of Harry Hicks who was the headmaster during the 1960s and was probably the best-loved and most well-known of all the New Close headmasters. New Close School can probably consider themselves lucky to have been given half a page in this book; Princecroft School, for example, were given no section of their own in this chapter. Why not? Were they accidentally left out or didn’t Celia Lane and Pauline White have anything worthwhile to say about Princecroft School?
The chapter on industry and employment is also similarly choosy on what is included and what is left out. Several pages are devoted to two of the town’s building firms (Culverhouse Bros. Ltd. and R. Butcher & Son) but other builders in Warminster (Gaisford, and Ponton, for example) are not given the same treatment – Ponton is not even mentioned in the book. About half a page is devoted to gloving, with Jefferies, Dents and Holman & Byfield’s being given all of 18 lines. Other glove makers in Warminster, for example, Osmond & Son, are not mentioned. Readers are told that Beswicks left the town in the 1980s but readers are given no information as to what Beswicks manufactured, or where they were, etc. And again, mistakes are made. We are told (on page 171) that the Warminster Timber Company closed in 1961 – it actually closed in 1962.
The section on shops in the town centre is a huge let-down. The uses of the premises and the various shopkeepers, through the years, is very hit and miss. And whole areas are left out completely – Three Horseshoes Walk, Chinn’s Court and the Cornmarket precincts are not included for investigation. Lane and White, in some instances, have failed to take into consideration changes in the numbering of premises (Market Place numbers have been altered at least three times), consequently the authors get themselves into a muddle more than once.
There are other strange anomalies throughout the book too. References to “now” in the text depend on the moment when the various bits of information were gathered during what must have been the five years it has taken Celia Lane and Pauline White to compile the contents of the book. “Now” can be 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 or 1999. What a pity, the “now” references couldn’t have been ironed out during the final edit, that’s if there was one. Annoying as all this is, it is, however, the amount of the mistakes in the book that really let readers (and more importantly researchers) down.
You really have to ask yourself how a book of local history, by two leading members of the Warminster History Society, came to be full of so many mistakes – well in excess of 150 in fact. We know they simply copied errors from other books, but was this the only reason? Could one of the factors be that neither of these women are “Warminster folk”, but only came here to live “fairly recently,” and, in consequence, couldn’t have been sure if what they were putting into print was accurate or not?
Celia Lane and Pauline White would have been well advised to have let someone with a knowlege of Warminster’s past read their manuscript before they went to press. Perhaps then a lot of the mistakes could have been picked up on and corrected. The President of the Warminster History Society, Jack Field, has recently been regaled as “having an encyclopaedic knowledge of Warminster’s past,” but one wonders whether he was shown Lane’s and White’s efforts, otherwise how did all their gaffs make it to the final script. Who, if anyone, was responsible for editing this book? The services of an editor would not only have eliminated the errors but also prevented the patchiness of the contents from being unleashed on the public. Warminster In The 20th Century suffers badly because of this.
On a pedantic note, the purists will tell you that the 20th century didn’t end until 31st December 2000, but the History Society chose to “jump the gun” and publish in the autumn in 1999, which meant they had to complete their half-cock effort 18 months before the century had expired. Consequently, any of the great events which happened in Warminster, rounding off the century, were not included; for instance, the re-opening of the Athenaeum, and the big fire in the Market Place. What a pity they couldn’t have used the opportunity to well and truly bring the history of Warminster up to date – something they aspired to in the first sentence of their acknowledgements at the start of the book. It would have been really inspiring if they had concluded their book with, say, a chapter, on how they saw Warminster at the end of the 20th Century. Now that would have been a piece of local history.
At nearly £20 a time the book is rather an expensive price for, as we have noted, a catalogue of errors. Luckily this reviewer didn’t buy a copy but was able to loan one from someone who was given it for Christmas. We’ll leave the last part of this review to them. They said “I’d like to throw it in the waste bin but I can’t because my wife gave it to me for Christmas and I dare not upset her. I won’t be reading it though. Even the information I gave Celia Lane has been written up wrongly in the book. I’ve disassociated myself entirely from it.”
Celia Lane and Pauline White have shown that local history is definitely not safe in their hands. Give their book a miss. What ever you do, don’t rely it on it for accurate reference. It will surely go down in history as one of the most erroneous local history books published in recent times.
