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Westbury, Wiltshire
Westbury is a town and civil parish in the west of the English county of Wiltshire, below the northwestern edge of Salisbury Plain, about south of Trowbridge and a similar distance north of Warminster. Originally a market town, Westbury was known for the annual Hill Fair where many sheep were sold in the 18th and 19th centuries; later growth came from the town's position at the intersection of two railway lines. The busy A350, which connects the M4 motorway with the south coast, passes through the town. The urban area has expanded to include the village of Westbury Leigh and the hamlets of Chalford and Frogmore. History A Romano-British settlement was found at The Ham, in the north of the parish, in the 1870s. The manor of Westbury, and the hundred with the same boundaries, was held by the king at the time of the Domesday survey in 1086. The Wiltshire Victoria County History recounts the fragmentation into manors, and traces their ownership. The ancient parish included B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wiltshire Council
Wiltshire Council is a council for the unitary authority of Wiltshire (excluding the separate unitary authority of Swindon) in South West England, created in 2009. It is the successor authority to Wiltshire County Council (1889–2009) and the four district councils of Kennet, North Wiltshire, Salisbury, and West Wiltshire, all of which were created in 1974 and abolished in 2009. Establishment of the unitary authority The ceremonial county of Wiltshire consists of two unitary authority areas, Wiltshire and Swindon, administered respectively by Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council. Before 2009, Wiltshire was administered as a non-metropolitan county by Wiltshire County Council, with four districts, Kennet, North Wiltshire, Salisbury, and West Wiltshire. Swindon, in the north of the county, had been a separate unitary authority since 1997, and on 5 December 2007 the Government announced that the rest of Wiltshire would move to unitary status. This was later put in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marketplace
A marketplace or market place is a location where people regularly gather for the purchase and sale of provisions, livestock, and other goods. In different parts of the world, a marketplace may be described as a '' souk'' (from the Arabic), ''bazaar'' (from the Persian), a fixed '' mercado'' (Spanish), or itinerant ''tianguis'' (Mexico), or ''palengke'' (Philippines). Some markets operate daily and are said to be ''permanent'' markets while others are held once a week or on less frequent specified days such as festival days and are said to be ''periodic markets.'' The form that a market adopts depends on its locality's population, culture, ambient and geographic conditions. The term ''market'' covers many types of trading, as market squares, market halls and food halls, and their different varieties. Thus marketplaces can be both outdoors and indoors, and in the modern world, online marketplaces. Markets have existed for as long as humans have engaged in trade. The earlies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Wiltshire
West Wiltshire was a local government district in Wiltshire, England, formed on 1 April 1974, further to the Local Government Act 1972, as a merger of the former urban districts of Bradford-on-Avon, Melksham, Trowbridge, Warminster and Westbury, along with Bradford and Melksham Rural District and the Warminster and Westbury Rural District.F. Youngs, ''Local Administrative Units: Southern England'' (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 706 There were five towns in the district, Bradford on Avon, Melksham, Trowbridge, Warminster and Westbury, each surrounded by rural parishes. About two-thirds of the district's population was in its five towns. The district council was based at purpose-built offices in Bradley Road, Trowbridge. It was abolished on 1 April 2009 as part of the 2009 structural changes to local government in England, when its functions were taken over by the new Wiltshire Council unitary authority. District Council West Wiltshire District Council had fort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Local Government Act 1972
The Local Government Act 1972 (c. 70) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales on 1 April 1974. It was one of the most significant Acts of Parliament to be passed by the Heath Government of 1970–74. Its pattern of two-tier metropolitan and non-metropolitan county and district councils remains in use today in large parts of England, although the metropolitan county councils were abolished in 1986, and both county and district councils have been replaced with unitary authorities in many areas since the 1990s. In Wales, too, the Act established a similar pattern of counties and districts, but these have since been entirely replaced with a system of unitary authorities. Elections were held to the new authorities in 1973, and they acted as "shadow authorities" until the handover date. Elections to county councils were held on 12 April, for metropolitan and Welsh districts on 10 May, and for non-metropolitan distri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Urban District (Great Britain And Ireland)
In England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, an urban district was a type of local government district that covered an urbanised area. Urban districts had an elected urban district council (UDC), which shared local government responsibilities with a county council. England and Wales In England and Wales, urban districts and rural districts were created in 1894 (by the Local Government Act 1894) as subdivisions of administrative counties. They replaced the earlier system of urban and rural sanitary districts (based on poor law unions) the functions of which were taken over by the district councils. The district councils also had wider powers over local matters such as parks, cemeteries and local planning. An urban district usually contained a single parish, while a rural district might contain many. Urban districts were considered to have more problems with public health than rural areas, and so urban district councils had more funding and greater power ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
River Biss
The River Biss is a small river in Wiltshire, England and is a tributary of the Bristol Avon. The name is of uncertain origin; it is claimed that the word is from the Old Norse ''bisa'', meaning "to strive". Progress The river rises near Upton Scudamore on the western side of Salisbury Plain, at Biss Bottom, as the Biss Brook, and flows northwards passing Westbury towards Trowbridge. As it reaches Yarnbrook the brook becomes the River Biss. The Baptist church at North Bradley lies close to the River Biss and in the 19th century river baptisms took place with over 2000 in attendance; the bridge here is still called 'The Baptising'. The river enters the centre of Trowbridge from the south-east through the ''Biss Meadows Country Park''. For a semi-urban location, the country park has a very rich variety of wildlife and includes areas of three UK Biodiversity Action Plan priority habitats ). Here the country park acts as an important flood plain as well as an amenity space. Passi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stert And Westbury Railway
The Stert and Westbury Railway was opened by the Great Western Railway Company in 1900 in Wiltshire, England. It shortened the distance between London Paddington station and , and since 1906 has also formed part of the Reading to Taunton line for a shorter journey from London to . History The Great Western Railway (GWR) had opened its main line between London Paddington and in 1841. It was extended westwards through and trains were running through to by 1867. Another route left the main line at Thingley Junction, west of , ran south to in 1848 and was extended to Weymouth in 1857. Both these lines carried trains connecting with ships – from the Channel Islands at Weymouth, and from America at Plymouth – but the GWR was sometimes referred to as the 'Great Way Round' as its routes to these places were longer than the rival London and South Western Railway. In 1895 the GWR started work on laying a second track on the Berks and Hants Extension Railway which was part of a r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of —later slightly widened to —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways. The GWR was called by some "God's Wonderful Railway" and by others the "Great Way Round" but it was famed as the "Holiday ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilts, Somerset And Weymouth Railway
The Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway (WS&WR) was an early railway company in south-western England. It obtained Parliamentary powers in 1845 to build a railway from near Chippenham in Wiltshire, southward to Salisbury and Weymouth in Dorset. It opened the first part of the network but found it impossible to raise further money and sold its line to the Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1850. The GWR took over the construction and undertook to build an adjacent connecting line; the network was complete in 1857. In the early years of the 20th century the GWR wanted to shorten its route from London to the West of England and built "cut-off" lines in succession to link part of the WS&WR network, so that by 1906 the express trains ran over the Westbury to Castle Cary section. In 1933 further improvements were made, and that part of the line was established as part of the "holiday line" to Devon and Cornwall. The network was already a major trunk route for coal from South Wales coa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abraham Laverton
Abraham Laverton (3 October 1819 – 31 October 1886), of Westbury, Wiltshire, was an English cloth mill owner, Liberal Member of Parliament for the parliamentary borough of Westbury from 1874 to 1880, and philanthropist. Early life Born in Trowbridge in 1819, and baptized into the Church of England on 9 October, Laverton was one of the four sons of William Laverton, a master weaver, and his wife Penelope Davis,Abraham Laverton thelaverton.co.uk, accessed 13 March 2021 who had married in Trowbridge in October 1803. Laverton grew up there in Newtown. Apart from three brothers, he also had a sister, Charlotte. In March 1825 his mother died, aged 41. As well as being a weaver, Laverton’s father was a contractor with clothiers, sharing his contracts with other weavers. The Laverton children had some educati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William De Westbury
William Westbury (c. 1385 – 1448/49), also called William de Westbury and William of Westbury, was a fifteenth-century judge of the King's Bench. Career William de Westbury was for many years the steward of the manor of Castle Combe, near Chippenham, Wiltshire,Henry Bull, The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, Vol. III. (1857) and during that time was noted as being a lawyer by profession. He was also active in the Assize Court, Common Pleas circa 1406 when described as an "Apprentice". Later records held within the National Archives indicate that William de Westbury held the office of Bishop's Bailiff of New Sarum from approximately 1411 to 1418.Foss, Edward, ''Biographia Juridica: A Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England from the Conquest'' (1848) He was appointed Sergeant-at-law in 1418 (after refusal of the position in 1415; the judges' pay had not kept pace with the times and acceptance to become Sergeant-at-law sometimes led to appointment a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
