Category: Lob In The Landscape

West Wiltshire District Council’s Warminster Town Centre Conservation Area Character Assessment, Informative Document, Consultation Draft/Cabinet Draft, of December 2006, includes the following notes:

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE
There are no Scheduled Ancient Monuments currently in Warminster Town Centre. However, immediately to the east of the town are the massive earthworks of Battlesbury Camp, an Iron Age hill fort that provides tangible evidence of prehistoric settlement patterns in the area.

The Extensive Urban Survey undertaken in 2001 by Wiltshire County Council compiled from desktop studies of the sites and monuments record that numerous excavations within the Warminster area have revealed prehistoric and later artefacts including:

Neolithic worked flints that have been recovered from a number of sites throughout the town.

Bronze Age artefacts that were found to the rear of George Street prior to the undertaking of modern development in the mid 1990s.

On Weymouth Street, just outside of the conservation area, Roman materials were found during the redevelopment at the Regal Cinema.

Records of the Saxon period suggest that a Saxon church was located on the opposite side of Church Street to St Denys’ Church on ground now belonging to Warminster School adjacent to the swimming pool. Aerial photographs showing crop marks appear to support the documentary evidence of the site of the possible Saxon church. The County Council has not recorded further physical investigation in this location.

Archaeological evidence, including a series of drainage ditches and pottery finds, identifies further Saxon activity around the Emwell and Silver Street area.

During the medieval period there was a large expansion of the town to the east of the original Saxon settlement. The most notable feature that demonstrates clear evidence of this planned medieval growth of the town, are the number of burgage plots that still exist as narrow strips of private land often contained within brick or stone walls, at the rear of property fronting onto East Street, Market Place and High Street. The most notable section is to the rear of buildings on the south side of East Street into Market Place. Any proposals for development in these areas should ensure that these plots are maintained in an identifiable form. This issue will be taken up more fully in the section devoted to the town centre and the Warminster Conservation Area Management Plan.

Many finds and artefacts are now housed in the town museum that is housed within the Library and bear witness, to the thriving community during the past.

Whilst the historic buildings within the town represent an important element of Warminster’s environmental richness, it should be recognised that many of the buildings that display 18th and 19th century frontages are, in reality, earlier medieval and later medieval structures that were simply refronted during the more affluent part of the market town’s evolution.

The industrial heritage of the town is mainly represented by the malting and brewery buildings that are located in and around the principle streets. Many of them have survived although converted, to other uses including; residential accommodation. The most important group still operating are in Pound Street, whilst examples of converted maltings or breweries can be found to the north of Silver Street and south of Vicarage Street.

Wednesday 4th August 2004

A letter from Paul Marshall:

About two years ago there was a proposal to build a National Archaeology Centre near Warminster. I recall being at a meeting, when an archaeologist and another man tried to get support for the idea.

If my memory serves me right they said the Centre would be very successful, because a lot of people were interested in archaeology, hence the big viewing figures for the Time Team tv programme.

I’m not sure that I followed this thinking, as there are lots of other programmes that get far more viewers. Eastenders and Big Brother come immediately to mind. So why not a centre for them somewhere?

Something else that intrigued me, although it didn’t surprise me in this day and age, was the amount of money they said would be needed to build this Archaeology Centre. They were talking about millions of pounds.

Why is it that everything you hear about these days costs millions and sometimes tens and hundreds of millions? And, more often than not, goes millions over budget to ensure completion, or runs out of millions and is not even brought to fruition.

There has recently been a mention again about this Archaeology Centre. It was obviously wishful thinking of me when I expressed the hoped it had been shelved. It would undoubtedly be a silly use of money that would be better spent on something else, like a decent hospital for Warminster.

Excuse the pun but can I assume (and really hope) that the plans for an Archaeology Centre will be laid to rest and buried forever in the dust.