Volume 20

Chippenham area

The town mill photographed around 1905 with piles of coal outside. It was demolished in 1958. In its place is the Rivo Lounge, The Bridge (next to the town bridge) and a row of 1960s shops. Photo courtesy of Chippenham Museum Collection

The town mill photographed around 1905 with piles of coal outside. It was demolished in 1958. In its place is the Rivo Lounge, The Bridge (next to the town bridge) and a row of 1960s shops. Photo courtesy of Chippenham Museum Collection

The Market Place next to the town war memorial, thought to have been taken in the 1930s. Photo courtesy of Chippenham Museum Collection

The Market Place next to the town war memorial, thought to have been taken in the 1930s. Photo courtesy of Chippenham Museum Collection

 

Chippenham is the last large urban Wiltshire area to be covered and forms the major part of volume 20. Research is well underway.

The volume includes chapters on different aspects of the history of the town and the surrounding villages of Bremhill, Christian Malford, Hardenhuish, Kington St Michael and Kington Langley, Langley Burrell, Pewsham and Tytherton Kellaways, all of which lay within the Chippenham hundred in earlier times.

The town history particularly covers boundaries, communications and population; origins and development from prehistoric times through to the modern period; land ownership; local government; and economic, social and religious history. The work on outer Chippenham and the parishes also deals with the original manors, their owners and their estates.

The distinguishing quality of the VCH is authoritative history using local and national sources and fully referenced. The full Chippenham volume will contain about 120,000 words about the town and its parish, and about a further 70,000 words about the surrounding villages.

Although this is necessarily concise, it is the essential starting point for anyone interested in local history and for those who wish to study particular topics more fully. In order to achieve the high standards set by the VCH nationally, we employ professional historians who have experience of this type of research.

As research work progresses, draft chapters are published online by the Institute of Historical Research.

Draft text for Chippenham itself is now complete and the outer parishes will be finished by the summer of 2023. Editing of the text is already under way and after that the volume will be prepared for publication.

Chippenham research

Featured
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Rewriting the history of Chippenham

This is the edited text of a lecture given by John Chandler, VCH Wiltshire consultant editor, to Chippenham Civic Society and the Friends of St Andrew’s Church.

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The good deed of Rev Bowles of Bremhill

In December 1830 a number of congratulatory newspaper articles were published in the press across southern England, in praise of the esteemed vicar of Bremhill, Rev. William Lisle Bowles, who had considerably raised the wages he paid to his agricultural workers.

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Largesse, commerce and dynasties in medieval Chippenham

The later eleventh and twelfth centuries did not see substantial royal interest in Chippenham resumed. The town went unnoticed by the numerous chroniclers of the Anglo-Norman period, making it unlikely that it was ever the site of important political or military events, as it had been in the ninth century.

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