We move further along Boreham Road for our Then and Now feature in Warminster.

We are taking a look at the Church of St John the Evangelist built in 1865.

The church was built in a field called Picked Acre alongside Boreham Road.

The eight acres of land was given for a church and churchyard, together with an endowment for its upkeep, by William Temple of Bishopstrow House in 1859.

The Rev JE Phillips, the vicar of Warminster, opened a building fund with £500 from Mr Temple and a sum of £2,700 was raised in less than a year, a figure more than the eventual cost of £1,935.

The main building work was undertaken by a Mr Strong of Portway to a design by London architect George Edmund Street, who also designed the school in 1872 and the lychgate in 1874.

St John's Church was completed in 1865. Once completed the larger part of Boreham, with 78 houses and population of over 300, was taken out of the parish of Christ Church to become the rural parish of St John.

The large houses along the then main road to Salisbury, built from the mid 19th century onwards for the middle classes, provided a nucleus of the congregation for the new church. In due course families were commemorated by gifts to the church of stained glass windows and memorials.

Our archive picture is taken from a postcard showing the church in 1927, two years after the baptistry was added by Mrs Rule, the daughter of "Squire" Temple.

The baptistry at the west end was designed by architect Charles Ponting with London glaziers J Powell and Sons of Whitefriars providing the mosaic tile decoration around 1912.

Today's image looks very much the same but with the ivy now cut down from the church walls.