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The Warminster Area

 

       
 

Warminster has been a cloth and glove manufacturing centre, with a very important agricultural market. It was also a 'thoroughfare' town (now mercifully by-passed) along the road from Bath to Salisbury. Georgian prosperity is evident in its impressively long principal street, and it is still an important shopping centre. During the present century its economy and population have been boosted by the infantry barracks built between the town and the plain. The villages of the upper Wylye and Deverill valleys are typically small, compact, and desirable, and one of them - Heytesbury - was formerly a small town and Parliamentary borough. Chitterne, away from the valley and isolated on Salisbury Plain, shows us what might have become of its neighbour, Imber, had the army not confiscated it in 1943. Horningsham and Corsley display a very different settlement pattern. They lie within the area of the former Selwood Forest, and their dispersed hamlets and farms are typical of relict woodland.