The borough of Great Bedwyn, ‘a group of shabby houses upon a hill’ which together were ‘not intrinsically worth a thousand pounds’, was composed of a small and wholly agricultural town and the two tithings of Bedwyn Prebend and Stock and Ford, and lay in the hundred of Kinwardstone on the eastern edge of Wiltshire. Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, i. 13; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 790, 791; PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 112; (1833), xxxvii. 700; VCH Wilts. xvi.
Downton, in the parish and hundred of the same name, near the Hampshire border, was ‘in appearance nothing more than a village’. It had a small lace factory and, according to Mrs. Arbuthnot, was ‘famous for phaetons’, but it was otherwise predominantly agricultural.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 800; Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 419; VCH Wilts. iv. 180; xi. 41, 42, 44; PP (1833), xxxvii.
Hindon, which in 1820 was described by William Hazlitt as ‘a dreary spot’, was a chapelry of the parish of East Knoyle, in the hundred of Downton. An inconsiderable market town, it had lost most of its cloth industry by that time, but its inns still benefited from the considerable through traffic.Complete Works of Hazlitt ed. P.P. Howe, xviii. 368; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 801; VCH Wilts. iv. 178-9; xi. 98, 100, 102; N. Sheard, Short Hist.
A rare example of an open burgage borough, Chippenham finally lost its struggle for independence in this period and, on the eve of the Reform Act, fell under the control of a single proprietor. Sited on the Avon, in the parish and hundred of Chippenham, the town had a ‘neat and clean’ appearance, except for the shambles. There remained a few woollen, as well as small silk and cotton, manufactures, but the traditional cloth industry was greatly depressed.
The borough of Malmesbury, ‘very pleasantly situated on an eminence’ in the hundred of the same name, comprised the parish of the Abbey and parts (known as ‘in-parishes’) of St. Paul, Malmesbury and St. Mary, Westport. According to the boundary commissioners, it was
Cobbett remarked of ‘that villainous hole’ Cricklade, a market town on Wiltshire’s northern border, that ‘certainly, a more rascally place I never set my eyes on’. The countryside around he found pleasant enough, but the people were in a wretched condition, and ‘everything had the air of the most deplorable want’.Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, i. 15; ii. 414; Pigot’s Commercial Dir.
Westbury, in the parish and hundred of the same name, was, according to William Cobbett†, a ‘miserable hole’, a ‘nasty odious rotten borough, a really rotten place’, whose cloth factories ‘seem to be ready to tumble down as well as many of the houses’.Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, ii. 400. The decline of its cloth industry, with the exception of one large concern, made the town ‘altogether insignificant’, and led to economic distress, unemployment and emigration. Pigot’s Commercial Dir.
Dismissed by William Cobbett† as ‘an ill-looking place enough’, Marlborough, a hundred in itself, was a small but reasonably prosperous market town in eastern Wiltshire.Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, i. 14; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 805; PP (1831-2), xl. 111; (1835), xxiii. 222; VCH Wilts. xii.
Wilton, ‘pleasantly situated in the widest part of the vale of the Wiley’, was only nominally the county town of Wiltshire, having become ‘a small, decayed place’.Sir R.C. Hoare, Wilts. Branch and Dole, 55; Spectator, 1 Jan. 1831. Its cloth production and even its famed carpet manufactures, whose ‘brilliancy of colour, variety of pattern and boldness of design are equalled by few and exceeded by none’, had substantially declined. The Times, 16 May 1823; Wilts. RO, Pembroke mss 2057/F4/24, pp. 86, 89, 90, 93; Pigot’s Commercial Dir.
The pocket borough of Heytesbury, in the parish and hundred of the same name, was, as William Cobbett† wrote in 1826, ‘formerly a considerable town’, but had become ‘a very miserable affair’, especially in comparison with its prosperous and unfranchised neighbour, Warminster.Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, i. 381, 388, 389, 391, 396; Devizes Gazette, 26 July 1821; Keenes’ Bath Jnl. 24 Oct. 1825; Pigot’s Commercial Dir.
