Wilfred Middlebrook, in The Changing Face Of Warminster, first written in 1960, updated in 1971, noted:
In Saxon times, too, the sheriffs’ court was held on the outskirts of the village [Bishopstrow], in the shade of a huge oak tree called Ileigh Oak, in Southleigh Woods. More modern records show how the two ‘hundreds’ of Warminster and Heytesbury held their sheriffs’ court at Ileigh. Tythingmen came from the Wylye Valley to pay the village tithes, law cases were tried and sentences imposed.