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Melksham
Melksham () is a town on the River Avon in Wiltshire, England, about northeast of Trowbridge and south of Chippenham. At the 2011 census, the Melksham built-up area had a population of 19,357, making it Wiltshire's fifth-largest settlement after Swindon, Salisbury, Chippenham and Trowbridge. History Early history Excavations in 2021 in the grounds of Melksham House found fragments of locally made pottery from the early Iron Age (7th to 4th centuries BC). There is evidence of settlement continuing into the later Iron Age and Roman periods, including Roman clay roof tiles. Melksham developed at a ford across the River Avon. The name is presumed to derive from "''meolc''", the Old English for milk, and ''"ham"'', a village. On John Speed's map of Wiltshire (1611), the name is spelt both ''Melkesam'' (for the hundred) and ''Milsham'' (for the town itself). Melksham is also the name of the Royal forest that occupied the surrounding of the area in the Middle Ages. Landowne ...
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Melksham Town Hall
Melksham Town Hall is a municipal building in the Market Place in Melksham, Wiltshire, England. The structure, which was built as a cheese market and is now the home of Melksham Town Council, is a Grade II listed building. History The west side of the Market Place had originally formed part of the orchard of Place House, a manor house which had been erected by Henry Brouncker in the mid-16th century. His son, also named Henry Brouncker, became member of parliament for Westbury in 1572, for Devizes in 1584, 1586 and 1589, and for Dorchester in 1601. The house itself was completely demolished in 1864. The orchard site was acquired by the directors of the Melksham Market Company in 1846 as the proposed location for a cheese market. The new building was designed by D. Jones of Bradford-on-Avon in the Italianate style, built in ashlar stone at a cost of £3,350 and was completed in 1847. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto the Market Place; ...
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Melksham House
Melksham House is a Grade II listed house, situated 150 metres west of the Market Place in the town of Melksham, Wiltshire, England. The house was built between the 17th and early 18th century, although records show a building on this site since about 1608. In 1699 Richard Coxeter sold the property to Sir Walter Long, after which time various replacements and extensions were added over the years, while the house continued in the ownership of the Long family. During the 19th century the house had a succession of owners, including (from 1866) Edward Barnwell, schoolmaster, archaeologist and antiquarian, who financed the building of St Andrew's church in the Forest area of the town. After the house was bought in 1895 by Charles Awdry of Shaw Hill House, the Blathwayt family were tenants – among them George Blathwayt, appointed High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1916. In 1920 the house and surrounding was in the ownership of the Avon Rubber Company, purchased for use as the compan ...
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River Avon, Bristol
The River Avon is a river in the south west of England. To distinguish it from a number of other rivers of the same name, it is often called the Bristol Avon. The name 'Avon' is a cognate of the Welsh word , meaning 'river'. The Avon rises just north of the village of Acton Turville in South Gloucestershire, before flowing through Wiltshire. In its lower reaches from Bath to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth near Bristol, the river is navigable and known as the Avon Navigation. The Avon is the 19th longest river in the United Kingdom, at , although there are just as the crow flies between the source and its mouth in the Severn Estuary. The catchment area is . Etymology The name "Avon" is a cognate of the Welsh word ''afon'' "river", both being derived from the Common Brittonic , "river". " River Avon", therefore, literally means "river river"; several other English and Scottish rivers share the name. The County of Avon that existed from 1974 to 1996 was named after ...
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Bristol Avon
The River Avon is a river in the south west of England. To distinguish it from a number of other rivers of the same name, it is often called the Bristol Avon. The name 'Avon' is a cognate of the Welsh word , meaning 'river'. The Avon rises just north of the village of Acton Turville in South Gloucestershire, before flowing through Wiltshire. In its lower reaches from Bath to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth near Bristol, the river is navigable and known as the Avon Navigation. The Avon is the 19th longest river in the United Kingdom, at , although there are just as the crow flies between the source and its mouth in the Severn Estuary. The catchment area is . Etymology The name "Avon" is a cognate of the Welsh word ''afon'' "river", both being derived from the Common Brittonic , "river". " River Avon", therefore, literally means "river river"; several other English and Scottish rivers share the name. The County of Avon that existed from 1974 to 1996 was named after ...
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Chippenham (UK Parliament Constituency)
Chippenham is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom since 2015 by Michelle Donelan, a Conservative, who also currently serves as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The 2010 constituency includes the Wiltshire towns of Bradford on Avon, Chippenham, Corsham and Melksham. A parliamentary borough of Chippenham was enfranchised in 1295. It sent two burgesses to Parliament until 1868 and one thereafter until the borough constituency was abolished in 1885. There was a county division constituency named after the town of Chippenham from 1885 to 1983, when the name of that constituency was changed to North Wiltshire. Following the 2003–2005 review into parliamentary representation in Wiltshire, the Boundary Commission created a new county constituency, reviving the name of Chippenham as a seat. It is formed from parts of the previously existing Devizes, North Wiltshire and Westbury constituencies. Bou ...
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Chippenham
Chippenham is a market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ... in northwest Wiltshire, England. It lies northeast of Bath, Somerset, Bath, west of London, and is near the Cotswolds Area of Natural Beauty. The town was established on a crossing of the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon and some form of settlement is believed to have existed there since before Roman Britain, Roman times. It was a royal vill, and probably a royal hunting lodge, under Alfred the Great. The town continued to grow when the Great Western Railway arrived in 1841. The town had a population of 36,548 in 2021. Geography Location Chippenham is in western Wiltshire, at a prominent crossing of the River Avon (Bristol), River Avon, between the North Wessex Downs, Marlborough Downs to the east, t ...
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Royal Forest
A royal forest, occasionally known as a kingswood (), is an area of land with different definitions in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The term ''forest'' in the ordinary modern understanding refers to an area of wooded land; however, the original medieval sense was closer to the modern idea of a "preserve" – i.e. land legally set aside for specific purposes such as royal hunting – with less emphasis on its composition. There are also differing and contextual interpretations in Continental Europe derived from the Carolingian and Merovingian legal systems. In Anglo-Saxon England, though the kings were great huntsmen, they never set aside areas declared to be "outside" (Latin ''foris'') the law of the land.H. R. Loyn, ''Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest'' 2nd ed. 1991:378-82. Historians find no evidence of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs (c. 500 to 1066) creating forests. However, under the Norman kings (after 1066), by royal prerogative forest law was widely applied. ...
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Wiltshire
Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the northeast and Berkshire to the east. The county town was originally Wilton, after which the county is named, but Wiltshire Council is now based in the county town of Trowbridge. Within the county's boundary are two unitary authority areas, Wiltshire and Swindon, governed respectively by Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council. Wiltshire is characterised by its high downland and wide valleys. Salisbury Plain is noted for being the location of the Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles (which together are a UNESCO Cultural and World Heritage site) and other ancient landmarks, and as a training area for the British Army. The city of Salisbury is notable for its medieval cathedral. Swindon is the ...
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Trowbridge
Trowbridge ( ) is the county town of Wiltshire, England, on the River Biss in the west of the county. It is near the border with Somerset and lies southeast of Bath, 31 miles (49 km) southwest of Swindon and 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Bristol. The town had a population of 37,169 in 2021. Long a market town, the Kennet and Avon canal to the north of Trowbridge played an instrumental part in the town's development as it allowed coal to be transported from the Somerset Coalfield and so marked the advent of steam-powered manufacturing in woollen cloth mills. The town was the foremost producer of this mainstay of contemporary clothing and blankets in south west England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, by which time it held the nickname "The Manchester of the West". The civil parish of Trowbridge had a population of 33,108 at the 2011 census. The parish encompasses the settlements of Longfield, Lower Studley, Upper Studley, Studley Green and Trowle Common. ...
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Erlestoke
Erlestoke is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, on the northern edge of Salisbury Plain. The village lies about east of Westbury and the same distance southwest of Devizes. Erlestoke Prison, the only prison in Wiltshire, is within the parish. History The ancient parish of Erlestoke was a chapelry of Melksham. The Crown was lord of the manor of Erlestoke; the first recorded grant of land was by Henry I in the 12th century. From the 16th until the early 18th the Brouncker family held land at Erlestoke, including Henry Brouncker, a Member of Parliament in the 16th and early 17th. Later owners included Peter Delmé, an 18th-century MP; Joshua Smith (1732–1819), MP for Devizes; and George Watson-Taylor (1771–1841), also MP for Devizes. The Watson-Taylors built up large estates at Erlestoke, Coulston (including Baynton House), Great Cheverell and Edington until they were divided and sold between 1907 and 1910, following the death in 1902 of Simon Watson Tay ...
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Capital And Counties Bank
The Capital and Counties Bank was a London clearing bank, which operated 473 branches throughout the United Kingdom from 1877 until its acquisition by Lloyds Bank in 1918. The bank was formed as the Hampshire and North Wilts Banking Company, following the merger of the Hampshire Banking Company and the North Wilts Banking Company. It was renamed Capital and Counties Bank in 1878. The Hampshire Banking Company had been established in Southampton in 1834 and the North Wilts Banking Company in Melksham Melksham () is a town on the River Avon in Wiltshire, England, about northeast of Trowbridge and south of Chippenham. At the 2011 census, the Melksham built-up area had a population of 19,357, making it Wiltshire's fifth-largest settlement aft ... in 1835, from the private bank of Moule & Co. founded in 1792. Lloyds Bank offered to acquire the bank on the terms of one Lloyds share, plus £2 cash, for each Capital and Counties share in 1918, with the accounts of the two banks at ...
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Amesbury Priory
Amesbury Priory was a Benedictine monastery at Amesbury in Wiltshire, England, belonging to the Order of Fontevraud. It was founded in 1177 to replace the earlier Amesbury Abbey, a Saxon foundation established about the year 979. The Anglo-Norman Amesbury Priory was disbanded at the Dissolution of the monasteries and ceased to exist as a monastic house in 1539. While the earlier Amesbury Abbey had been exclusively a nunnery or house of women, its successor, Amesbury Priory, following the particular structures of its parent Order of Fontevraud, was both a convent of nuns and a corresponding monastery of men. Both were governed locally by a prioress and ultimately by the Abbess of Fontevraud, in Anjou, part of the territories in what is now France that were then ruled by the English royal house. Nothing remains of the priory above ground, its site having been used for a mansion which re-uses the name Amesbury Abbey. Foundation In 1177 Henry II resolved upon suppressing Queen Æ ...
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