Trowbridge & Malmesbury

TROWBRIDGE

Trowbridge is the shopping destination for thousands of people from all over the West Country. Take a look below at a small selection of shops and businesses within the town - don't forget the free car parking in the multi storey car park right next to our wonderful Town Park!

The cloth industry maintained Trowbridge’s wealth for over five hundred years. The majority of the buildings in the town centre are listed and are a witness to the prosperity of the clothiers that made their fortunes here. Trowbridge boasts some of the finest Georgian buildings in the country.

Today Trowbridge is still a bustling business town. It has two shopping centres, Castle Place on the site of the former cattle market and The Shires in a modern complex that has been built around Salter’s Mill, which now houses the town’s excellent museum.

The two centres are linked by a pedestrianised shopping area which is where you will find hjKnee Department Store as well as other shops from the traditional to the specialised retailers. Nothing is very far away in Trowbridge and once visitors have parked in one of the many car parks, the busy town centre is only a leisurely walk away.

MALMESBURY

Malmesbury is a special place, sacred and full of history yet vibrant and at the cutting-edge of new technology. For more than two and a half millennia successive generations have populated this hilltop which forms the centre of the community we now call Malmesbury.

The community was anciently the frontier of a kingdom. Tetbury, some five miles to the North, was in Mercia; Malmesbury, in Wessex (the West Saxon Kingdom). Today it heads the list of the oldest boroughs in England and has the pride of place in the Guinness Book of Records. Almost a thousand years ago it was to head the list of towns in Wiltshire in the Domesday Book.

Malmesbury is also famous for its Abbey and about one third of the Abbey Church remains for us to marvel at today. The whole of the northern part of the town would have been covered with monastic buildings and it is difficult for us to imagine the vast offices of the Abbey as it would have been seen until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the middle sixteenth century. Many poets and painters have viewed the town and its Abbey and found inspiration. J.M.W. Turner at the end of the eighteenth century sketched many aspects of the town and fortunately many fine watercolours exist of his views of the hilltop.