Category: Gazetteer

A geographical dictionary providing reference information about places and place names in Warminster and other civil parishes in the surrounding area.

Crabtree – A Paradise That Became An RAF Hutted Camp

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

This was once a paradise indeed, when rhododendrons and azaleas grew in a tangled profusion that defies description. These were cleared away, however, and during the War years the R.A.F. built a hutted camp among the tall trees of Crabtree, and made of Cannimore Field a sewage works. 

The R.A.F. station at Crabtree was no flying centre, but merely a large collection of storage huts well-hidden among the trees; which were a supply depot. After the War the air force moved out and Crabtree became a re-settlement camp for Europeans exiled by the War, and many unfamiliar tongues could be heard in Warminster as these Poles, Ukrainians and other nationalities roamed the streets and viewed the well-stocked shops in wonderment. One of the huts was transformed into a church, decorated beautifully by the men in the colourful fashion of their distant homeland.

Now the huts have gone, save a few higher up the Horningsham road that Lord Bath retained for his own use, and sylvan Crabtree is once more a fitting terminal to the lovely lane of Cannimore.

Hayworth Lane, Warminster

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

At the foot of Pound Street we emerge once more to a most impressive change in the face of Warminster. Not so many years ago the lane ended at a junction of similar lanes – Brook Street, South Street, Cannimore Road and Folly Lane. This spot had the fanciful name of Broadway – but it had only three or four little old cottages, with a water tap in the hedge across the road.

Now there is a huge circular traffic roundabout where the cottages once stood, and the vast new housing estate of Broadway sprawls all across the countryside to the west. While the houses were being built, the recently formed Warminster Society For The Preservation Of Public Footpaths, armed with maps and a stepladder, tried to follow the route of a public footpath called Hayworth Lane. They scaled a garden wall and tried to climb the roof of a bungalow in a fruitless attempt to save the footpath for posterity. This was in February 1969, and now the Broadway estate, complete with its own shopping centre, successfully straddles the old Hayworth Lane.

Highbury Park And Its Environs, Warminster

Wilfred Middlebrook, in The Changing Face Of Warminster, first written in 1960, updated in 1971, noted:

Across Boreham Road from Prestbury Drive is another new estate that now opens up the way into Woodcock Road – the Highbury Park estate. Highbury was the home for many years of the late Major Teichman, but the house, now the head offices of the West Wilts Water Board, was built on the site of an old coaching inn called the Rising Sun. Coaches called here after passing through the nearby turnpike at Holly Lodge. The Eacott family owned this property in days gone by, with lands stretching back as far as the present railway, but with the decline of the coaching era the landlord got behind with his beer payments, and the land and property got into the hands of the brewers. Frank Morgan the brewer pulled down the old inn and built the present Highbury House, but the Eacott family name is still recalled by older inhabitants of Warminster. Chancery Lane, which borders the property on the western side and also leads to Woodcock, is still known by them as Eacott’s Lane. Maybe even this later appellation of Chancery Lane is the result of the unfortunate ending of the Eacott family fortunes.

Grandiose Plans For Creating A New And Traffic-Free Shopping Precinct Out Of The Three Horseshoes Yard, Warminster

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

The Three Horse Shoes Yard a little further along used to lead to the old rope-walk, where now it leads to the new Central Car Park. The Three Horse Shoes inn was closed in recent years (1968-1969) and the Horse Shoes Yard is also showing signs of this changing face of Warminster. At one time the Town Council had grandiose plans for this quiet backwater, with the idea of creating a new and traffic-free shopping precinct. All but one of the cottages behind the Three Horse Shoes have been demolished, and at the time of writing the whole area is a wilderness.

Hog’s Well At Bugley

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

Hog’s Well is at Bugley. This was a spring that was once noted for healing weak eyes. It is joined by a brook from Cley Hill, and by other streams before it enters the town of Warminster at the Obelisk to join the Swan River. It is a fact that many mothers have taken their children to Hog’s Well to bathe their eyes, and farmers with a weak pig in a litter, would let the piglet stand in the spring for fifteen minutes; this may well be the origin of the name Hog’s Well. Victor Manley relates a fantastic story of the Hog’s Well demons, who would rise out of the ground and seize anyone found wandering near the well. The unfortunate yokel would then be dragged underground, forced to repeat certain unspecified words, before being given money and released.

The Changing Face Of Warminster ~ The Life Of Man Barrow, Also Known Locally As Dead Man’s Island

Wilfred Middlebrook, in The Changing Face Of Warminster, published in 1971, referring to a burial mound near where Bradley Road, Warminster, meets the woodlands of Longleat, noted:

Here [Bradley Road], standing well back from the road, is the Life Of Man barrow or Dead Man’s Island, an impressive and picturesque barrow or burial mound of prehistoric times that occupies the centre of a large field and is crested with graceful firs.

The Life Of Man barrow is particularly charming because of its unique situation: the dark, sombre background of Cannimore Woods emphasising the isolation of this tree-crested mound as viewed from the Bradley Road.

Manley has a word to say about the Life Of Man barrow, “a site that would allow signalling to and from most of the prehistoric camps in the district. A few yards down the field is a circular black earth patch unaffected by ploughing – it might well have been the site of Celtic ceremonial fires.”

Whatever the ancient history of this secluded spot, a huge barrow rising indeed like a veritable Dead Man’s Island in the centre of the field, there must have been an uninterrupted view of the surrounding heights including Cley Hill before the firs of Cannimore were planted. Now it is but another intriguing name on the map of Warminster, a modern Warminster that has of late received over fifty new street and place names.

Dead Man’s Island lingers in the memory of the older inhabitants.

Music In Warminster, 1971

Information gleaned from a Warminster Town Guide, 1971:

Military displays in the town, as might be supposed, are given frequently as a regimental band is invariably quartered in the district.

Musical performances are also given from time to time in the Lake Pleasure Grounds by brass bands and by local groups offering entertainment in contemporary style.

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