Sunday 30 November 1986

Warminster Video Film Completed

WARMINSTER VIDEO FILM COMPLETED

The new film about Warminster, A Video Profile Of Warminster, has been completed and will go sale in December.

It will be available in both VHS or Betamax formats.

The cover/sleeve notes read:

A Video Profile On Warminster, narrated by Jane White, produced and directed by Bridget Penny.

This film takes a few glimpses into the history of the town.

Wherever possible local people have been involved in producing what we hope is an interesting finished product. Although research and initial scripting was by Bridget Penny and Amanda Chaunt the final exceptional script is by local author Danny Howell who has written a number of local history books, his latest being 'Yesterday's Warminster'.

Our Narrator is Jane White from Frome and the Cover Drawing is by Colin Young.

Special thanks go to the following for their help:

Mr. Jack Field and Warminster History Society, Warminster Library and Museum, Mr. McAdams and Mr. S. Monard and Warminster School, West Wilts Golf Club, Dr. Robinson and Mr. Mayhew at Devizes Museum (So much extra material was filmed here that we hope to produce a video about museum items later).

Lying on the South-Western edge of Salisbury Plain, Warminster is situated in the lea of five attractive hills. The relatively unspoilt landscape around the town holds some of the secrets of the area's earliest history, with the magnificent iron-age hill forts of Battlesbury and Scratchbury and also found nearby, bronze and some Roman remains. It was probably not until the mid Saxon era that the first urban settlements began here, somewhere within the loop of the Were, a stream which still flows through the town today.

Worgemynster, as the name was recorded at the end of the 9th century, has grown south and eventually east - making the present size and shape of the town we now see.

In the latter half of the 1600's Warminster was referred to as the greatest corn market in the west of England, its fame was to last for another 200 years and even by the late 1830's Warminster was ranked second only to Bristol.

During the 16th and 17th centuries several wealthy clothiers lived here but this trade disappeared by the time the railway arrived in 1851 and the corn market began to fade soon after.

Just prior to the Second World War the arrival of the army with the building of the barracks and the military workshops brought not only an upturn in the town's population but also new prospects for commerce and trade.

Today's garrison town is currently a prime residential area with some light industry.

Its position is an ideal centre for the tourist as Longleat and Stourhead Estates, Stonehenge, Salisbury, Bath, Lacock - to name but a few - are places within easy reach.