Category: Days During 1899

From a Warminster Town Guide, 1971:

In the 19th century Warminster’s growth continued and the town took on something of its present appearance. New buildings arose rapidly alongside the stately houses of the former wool merchants and in 1830 the Town Hall, in splendid Jacobean style, was opened. The Bath and Salisbury Railway linked the town with its neighbours more rapidly than did the coaches and thus a decline in road traffic set in, a decline that has been reversed in later years of the present century.

From A Handbook For Residents And Travellers In Wilts And Dorset, (fifth edition published by John Murray of Albemarle Street, London, in 1899):

WARMINSTER (Population 5600), the seat of quarter sessions, visitations, etc., with a Saturday market, to which the ready-money dealing in corn and a considerable malting business give importance.

It is a place of great antiquity, said to derive its present name from a “minster” or church which stood on the banks of the Were. The site of this ancient church is traditionally supposed to have been at a place called the Nunnery, and there is a so-called Nuns’ Path, a track ascending the neighbouring hill; but there is no record of any monastic foundation having existed here. At the period of the Conquest, Warminster belonged to and was held by the Crown; but the tenant under the Crown held the manor by the service of providing the King and his suite with one night’s lodging when they visited the neighbourhood. This right was claimed in 1663 by Charles II., and paid by Sir James Thynne of Longleat, and almost in our own days by George III., who, with the Queen and princesses, was entertained by the lord of the manor of Warminster at Longleat.

The Mauduits were lords of Warminster from Henry I. to Richard II.

Two of the royal regiments, under Kirke and Trelawney, were posted at Warminster in 1688, while Churchill and his chief accomplices were at Salisbury. “All was ripe for the execution of the long-meditated treason. Churchill advised the King (James II.) to visit Warminster, and inspect the troops stationed there. James assented. The coach was at the door of the bishop’s palace at Salisbury, when a violent bleeding at the nose compelled him to postpone his journey.” – Macaulay.

Warminster is a clean, airy town, with one long street of white stone houses. It stands in a beautiful country, situated at the entrance of a valley under the escarpment of the downs, which here expose their flanks in long perspective, or rise from the plain in isolated knolls.