Category: Gazetteer

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

A Recollection Of Visiting Three Horseshoes Yard, Warminster

Danny Howell writes:

My mother’s youngest sister, Pat (Patricia Norah Ball) married James Boyle in 1958. Pat was brought up in the Church of England faith but Jimmy was Irish, so they were married at St. George’s Catholic Church, Boreham Road, Warminster.

I don’t know if it was their first home but soon after marrying, Pat and Jimmy were living at Three Horseshoes Yard, Warminster. There were about ten houses there and Pat and Jimmy lived at number nine. They wouldn’t have owned it; they would have been renting from someone. They were living there in the early 1960s for sure, certainly 1960 to 1961.

I can remember my mother (Gwen Howell) going to Three Horseshoes Yard to visit Pat. My mother would take me along too. I was only about five years old but I can remember it, albeit vaguely. I do know that mother and I would go down the Avenue and turn left through a gap in the wall. There was a path which connected the Avenue with the back of the Three Horseshoes pub in the Market Place. I have a feeling the path wasn’t surfaced, it was just a dirt surface that made its way through a neglected area from the Avenue end to where the houses of Three Horseshoes Yard were.

The houses looked old and somehow I recall they were a bit run-down. They had seen better days. What I do vividly remember is that one of the houses had a first floor that came out over the path. If you wanted to continue along the path to the pub end you had to walk under the top part of that house. That’s always stuck in my mind. I suppose that property had what was known as “a flying freehold.”

My aunt Pat and uncle Jimmy eventually moved out of the house at Three Horseshoes Yard, I guess it wasn’t suitable bearing in mind they were starting a family. They later lived at Boreham Road, near the entrance to Chancery Lane, prior to moving to Bristol.

By 1970, the houses at Three Horseshoes Yard were either derelict or demolished and I remember seeing that area having the appearance of an overgrown wasteland – clumps of brambles and tall weeds and the odd pile of rubble here and there. I was fourteen years old then. Three years later they built the Three Horseshoes Mall at the southern end and, of course, the northern end became a car park – all very different to what it was when I was a young boy.

Chancery Lane, Warminster

Wilfred Middlebrook in his newspaper serialisation Highways And Byways In Warminster in the Wiltshire Times, Friday 22nd April 1960 noted:

Across the road [Boreham Road] from Chain Lane is Chancery Lane, a footpath leading from Boreham Road to Woodcock. Chancery Lane was once known as Eacott Lane; an old coaching inn on the corner being kept by the Eacott family. This was before the advent of the railway, and coaches used to call at this inn, the Rising Sun, after passing through the turnpike at Holly Lodge. A great-grandson of the Eacotts, still living in Warminster, relates that the land and property got into the hands of the brewers; Frank Morgan pulling down the old inn and building Highbury on the site for his own residence.

Chain Street, Warminster

Wilfred Middlebrook in his newspaper serialisation ‘Highways And Byways In Warminster’ published in the Wiltshire Times, Friday 22nd April 1960, noted:

Chain Street no longer exists as such, but was once a thoroughfare in the heart of the old town, running parallel with George Street.

Colt-Hoare, the Wiltshire historian, describes Chain Street as crossing the foot of the Deverill road from the New Inn to the White Hart.

In 1898 an octogenarian recalled it as running parallel with George Street, from the White Hart to  Almshouse Bridge at the foot of Town Hall Hill, now High Street. This was before the fine Georgian houses were built on the north side of George Street, and the old houses now on the south side were almost hidden by another row of houses with a narrow, watered alley between, called Chain Street, either because chains barred the entry of vehicular traffic as in Chain Lane [off Boreham Road, Warminster], or to prevent pedestrians from slipping into the stream. There was one place where the stream could be crossed by stepping stones, and the Almshouse Bridge spanned the stream at the far end. The almshouses fell into decay and were pulled down about 1750.

A commercial directory published in 1823, stated that ‘Warminster has been lately improved by the removal of hovels in George Street, neat houses now being erected.’ This probably marked the widening of the new street as we know it today, a fine wide thoroughfare with Chain Street but a long-lost link with a darker age.

Y.M.C.A. Special Appeal, Warminster. 1960

1960:

Y.M.C.A. Special Appeal. Warminster.

Local committee to raise funds for the Y.M.C.A. general work, with special emphasis on the work for H.M. Forces at home and overseas.

Chairman ~ Mr Peter B. Pickford.

Vice-Chairman ~ Mr S. Riley.

Hon. Treasurer ~ Mr E.R. Pound, Lloyds Bank, Warminster.

Hon. Secretary ~ Mr G.T. Frost, 14 East End Avenue, Warminster.

Y.M.C.A. Special Appeal, Warminster. 1960

1960:

Y.M.C.A. Special Appeal. Warminster.

Local committee to raise funds for the Y.M.C.A. general work, with special emphasis on the work for H.M. Forces at home and overseas.

Chairman ~ Mr Peter B. Pickford.

Vice-Chairman ~ Mr S. Riley.

Hon. Treasurer ~ Mr E.R. Pound, Lloyds Bank, Warminster.

Hon. Secretary ~ Mr G.T. Frost, 14 East End Avenue, Warminster.

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