Category: Persons – Surname beginning with W

Information about persons whose surnames begin with the letter W.

The Wansey Family At Ivy House, Church Street, Warminster

Adrian Phillips, in the book The Warminster Trail, compiled for the Warminster Festival 1989, and published by Aris & Phillips Ltd., wrote:

Further on from Westdown [at Church Street] is the other classical brick façade of Ivy House. This house has a long and interesting history.

The site was occupied by another member of the Wansey family called George Wansey (1651-1707) but it is not known if he built the present house which may have been built by his family in the 1790s.

It is supposed to be the scene of a well-known incident that took place in the Civil War to a John Wansey when “Two of King Charles’ men came into his house and insulted him, behaving very rudely; on which he sent to his Barn for his threshers to come down. They both fell on the King’s men and beat them soundly.” Fearing reprisals he rode off to joinn the Parliamentary forces; a not unlikely tale as the Wanseys were well-known Parliamentarians.

The Wanseys left this house when Henry Wansey built Sambourne House. Paintings of Warminster, by one of his daughters, have recently come to light and been on display in the Athenaeum.

This house [Ivy House] now belongs to St. Denys Convent and is used as a retreat hostel.

Jimmy White ~ Engineer Turned Baker

From the book Yesterday’s Warminster, by Danny Howell, published in 1987:

Jimmy White (1864-1945) had come to Warminster in 1886, to take an appointment as an engineer at John Wallis Titt’s ironworks. When an opportunity arose to purchase the bakery business at East Street, he resigned from his engineer’s job and ran the bakehouse until his retirement in 1936.

Mr. and Mrs. White lived at the residence known as Brockenhurst at East Street, and someone who has good reason to remember the couple’s retirement is Eddie Ball’s niece, Gwen Ball, now Mrs. Howell. She said “When they retired from their business they gave me a keepsake which I still have to this day. At that time I was fourteen and living just around the corner from Jimmy White’s, at the Furlong. When I arrived home from school, my mother would say to me “Do you want to go up to Mr. White’s to get a one-penny fat cake?’ They were big and the best I’ve ever tasted. Jimmy White did all his baking in the shop and it used to smell lovely. He also sold groceries and sweets and for a farthing you could get a tube of coconut sweet tobacco. Jimmy was a little short man, with a bald head, and he and his wife were ever so kind to everyone, especially children. They were the kindest people you ever could meet’.

Heytesbury Resident Awarded The B.E.M.

Friday 1st June 1984

Heytesbury resident Miss Millicent Williams was presented with the British Empire Medal by the Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire, at a special ceremonial reception at Heytesbury School on May 18th.

Colonel Hugh Brassey read out a letter from the Queen who regretted that she was unable to make the presentation personally. Also during the reception, which was organised and paid for by members of Heytesbury Parish Council, Miss Williams received several bouquets and baskets of flowers from many of the fifty guests present.

Miss Williams, who heralds from Dilton Marsh, was awarded the BEM for her services to the Heytesbury community. She came to the village, when she was twelve years old, in 1921, to work for the Misses Sarah and Alice Adlam, the then owners of Heytesbury village shop. Miss Williams took over the shop in 1944 when the second Miss Adlam died, and ran it until her retirement in 1976.

Miss Williams, who lives in the High Street, is currently keeping busy, visiting the sick and the lonely in the village, and she also arranges the flowers in the Parish Church of St. Peter and St. Paul.

Report from the Wylye Valley Life magazine.

First National Win For Clare Wigmore

Friday 1 June 1984

Clare Wins Top Private Driving National Prize

Mrs. Clare Wigmore of Clover Farm, Whiteparish, near Salisbury, scooped a top national prize in the show horse carriage championships, by winning the British Driving Society Sanders Watney Memorial Championship last month.

Clare, who is 35, won her class in her Spider gig drawn by a six year old pony called Winewood Jet and went on to win the overall championship. Her success was all the more remarkable because of the fact that Winewood Jet, a Welsh Section D cob, was competing in his first year of private driving. Private driving is entirely different from the cross-country version made popular by the Duke of Edinburgh.

Clare was one of 60 qualifiers in the final. She said: “This is my fourth year in private driving and I have won several championships locally this year but this is my first national win. I have been concerned with horses all my life and I have always wanted to do this kind of thing. So I just started four years ago, mainly for pleasure.”

23, 24 And 25 George Street, Warminster

Mr. A.C. Halliday in his notes on Warminster and the surrounding villages, penned in the 1980s, in a hard-bound notebook (now in the possession of Danny Howell), wrote:

Reminiscences of Mrs. Webb of West Parade, our “Mrs. Mopp’ for years. Her mother and father (a miner in Somerset and Wales) injured and moved in 1940 to No.25 George Street. Now the end house of the brick terrace on the north side. After World War II, circa. 1947/48, Nos.24 and 23 (identical with hers) were pulled down, as was a very large lodging, ex-private house, all to make way for the Octagon Garage.

The Tinkle Of The Bells

A recollection from her childhood in Warminster, by Mary Hatton (born Mary Christine Butler in 1881), which she penned in September 1970:

I can still remember the peculiar smell of Doctor Willcox’s surgery, presided over by Mr. Charlie King, who prescribed for people, especially children, if the Doctor was on a long journey or very busy. I never heard of him making a wrong diagnosis; we all had great faith in him, and he was very nice to everyone. He wore a very high crowned hat and a “tail’ coat.

In the winter we heard the tinkle of the bells on Doctor Willcox’s sleigh. We had very severe winters in those days and the roads were shocking. The roads in wet weather were a sea of mud, unbelievable now, they were only Macadamized a few years after the First World War, and what a difference it made. If the Doctor had to go to one of the villages, such as Imber, the whole town knew and everyone used to anxiously wait for the tinkle of the bells and heave a sigh of relief when they knew the Doctor was safely back; a pleasant memory.

When the Doctor was on a long journey and was later than expected, Mrs. Willcox used to have fresh chops cooked every ten minutes so that he should not have a dried-up meal or have to wait. It must have taken the Doctor nearly all day if he had to drive to Chitterne or any other out-of-the-way place. There were two other doctors in the town but everybody wanted Doctor Willcox.

The Wren Family At East Knoyle

From Chicklade And Pertwood, A Short Parish History by E.R. Barty, M.A., Chicklade, Old Rectory, first published December 1955:

It may be of interest to note that among “The Families of East Knoyle” was the Wren family. Dr. Christopher Wren, father of the great English architect, was Rector of Knoyle and Dean of Windsor. His son, the future Sir Christopher Wren left Wiltshire to become a student of Wadham College in 1646.

There is a probable connection between the Wren family and Chicklade as one, Elizabeth Wren, aged 87, was buried at Chicklade in 1837.

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