HISTORY IN THE LOCAL LANDSCAPE
Over 100 people attended 'History In The Local Landscape', the first in a series of five weekly slide shows on Warminster's past, being presented this autumn by Danny Howell at the Athenaeum.
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The performance was supposed to start at 7.30 p.m. but was delayed for 20 minutes because of the large number of latecomers having to queue on the pavement outside. The situation was soon eased when the box office staff was doubled.
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Athenaeum direector Shona Powell said: "This is the first lecture series at the Athenaeum and the response has been terrific. Mr. Howell is a very popular speaker and many people are obviously interested in local history. Wednesday's show lasted 90 minutes and Mr. Howell's commentary was given entirely without the aid of notes."
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Warminster's unique position in the landscape, in the lea of six hills, close to the sheep-rearing area of Salisbury Plain, plus it being almost equidistant to the ports of Bristol and Southampton, made it a commercial centre for several centuries after its urban beginning in Saxon times. However, Warminster was a settlement area long before, and earthworks and burials on the hills and in the Wylye Valley below, show that man was resident in 2,000 BC. Cley Hill, Arn Hill, Battlesbury and Scratchbury are all good examples of Iron Age hillforts.
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Battlesbury is over 600 feet high and was strongly defended with double ramparts and ditches. Mrs. M.E. Cunnington found 11 storage pits in the camp in 1922, which contained Iron Age pottery and the hub of a chariot wheel. Several skeletons, including that of woman and child, were uncovered near the north west entrance. Some historians have suggested that these skeletons were the result of a massacre by the Romans.
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The area around Warminster is particularly blessed with a variety of burial mounds, including round barrows, long barrows, bowl barrows and disc barrows. The majority of these were excavated by Sir Richard Colt-Hoare of Stourton and William Cunnington of Heytesbury in the early 1800s. Cunnington's examination of the Long Barrow at Colloway Clump, west of Arn Hill, in 1802, revealed three human skeletons and a five feet high sarsen stone.
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Evidence of the Romans has been discovered at Pitmeads, between Bishopstrow and Norton Bavant, and also at a site known as the Bury, east of Barrow House at Bishopstrow. Excavation of the Bury at the beginning of the 19th century yielded Roman pottery, and more came to light during the 1870s when farmworkers did some ditching work across the field.
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Mediaeval village sites can still be seen in the Warminster locality. A field below Middle Hill, north of Middleton Farm, was a village called Middleton in the Middle Ages. It had 18 poll tax payers in 1377 but by 1538 twelve closes where houses had been were empty. The barns and outbuildings at Middle Farm are currently being converted into dwellings, so what was once a village will soon return in the shape of a mini residential estate.
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The building of the Warminster Bypass brought new local archaeological finds to light, including the discovery of an adult male human skeleton, dated 1,500 BC, at Mootlebury Hill between Norton Bavant and Sutton Veny. Grooves worn by twine in the skeleton's teeth suggest that the man had been a bow user. The skeleton was missing its feet and it is believed that soldiers in camp at Sutton Veny during the First World War had unknowingly damaged these while practising trench digging.
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The bypass has been the most recent change in the Warminster landscape but Mr. Howell was quick to point out that this has blended into the rural scene extremely well because of advance design and tree planting.
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His last slide, a view of Warminster from Cley Hill, showed just how well the bypass has been absorbed into the countryside around the town.
