THE HISTORY OF TROWBRIDGE

The Ancient Landscape
Giant Stone Age Structures
Trowbridge’s First Inhabitants
King Alfred and the Viking threat
Trowbridge Castle
Disputes and the Magna Carta
Medieval Trowbridge flourishes
Wool and Clothiers in Tudor Times
Queens of England
Trowbridge bursts its boundaries
The Town’s Best Buildings
Mechanisation- Prosperity or Misery?
The Manchester of the West – “the richest town… from the Tweed to Tone”
Urban Improvements
Time for School
Trowbridge Inventors
New industries in Trowbridge
Trowbridge becomes the County Town
The Future

The Ancient Landscape

Trowbridge lies on the floor of a long-vanished sea. It is within sight of the Westbury hills where the fossilized remains of Jurassic Ichthyosaurs and giant sea reptiles such as Pliosaurs have been found. Only 26 miles away from the town, at Westbury-sub-Mendip, early evidence of human activity in Britain has been found, dating back some 400,000 years.

Humans were driven away by freezing ice with the coming of the last Ice Age. The ice and snow stretched down to a line between Swansea and the Wash. This was to last until 17,000 BC but by 12,000 BC southern Britain was habitable once more. At Hilperton a Stone Age (Palaeolithic) hand axe dating from up to 40,000 BC has been found and stone tools from around 10,000 years ago were discovered at Staverton and Semington.

Stone Age travellers to Trowbridge could have used a trackway along the ridge and forded the river Biss somewhere near to the present town bridge.

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Giant Stone Age Structures

Trowbridge is close to some of the oldest manmade stone structures known, older than the Great Pyramid of Egypt. In the New Stone Age or Neolithic period (c 3400-2400 BC) striking Megalithic monuments, burial chambers and henges were built in Wiltshire.

Stonehenge is some 31 miles/50km from the town, and Avebury is just 19 miles/30km away. Close to Avebury lies Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in Europe. Dating from the same time as the Henges, it took some 18 million man-hours to build. It seems likely that there was a settlement in the Trowbridge area as far back as the early Bronze Age, around 2300 to 1700 BC.

The Bronze Age in Britain saw the arrival of immigrants from central Europe. One group was known as the Beaker People (named for their unique pottery).  Examples of their pottery have been found in West Kennet Long Barrow in Wiltshire and close to Trowbridge at Staverton. There are also Bronze Age barrows at Bratton Camp on the downs overlooking the town.

There are some 120 major visible pre-Norman Conquest (1066) sites of antiquity within 65km/40 miles of Trowbridge. Such a concentration of sites within such a relatively small area is unique in the United Kingdom.  These include Stonehenge, Avebury, the Uffington White Horse, Wookey Hole, Wayland's Smithy, West Kennet Long Barrow, the Wansdyke, Silbury Hill, Badbury Rings and Cadbury Castle.

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Trowbridge’s First Inhabitants

Iron-working spread to Britain with the Celts from the Continent. What may once have been an Iron Age defensive camp was found during excavations beneath the site of Trowbridge’s Medieval castle.

In AD 43, the Romans under Emperor Claudius conquered Britain. Vespasian, who was eventually to become Emperor, was delegated to subdue the south–west. It is recounted that his army had to subjugate two tribes, which were probably the Durotriges of Dorset and south Wiltshire and the Dobonni. The Roman army had to take some twenty ‘oppida’ or hillforts before this was achieved.

At first, conquest was limited to the lowlands of what is now England. One of the major aims of the Roman invasion was to secure the economically important lead and silver mines of the Mendips in Somerset.  It is possible that units of Vespasian’s army came up the Wylye valley. The hillforts overlooking this area provide evidence of Roman occupation, and Battlebury Camp, near Warminster, has a Roman cemetery outside its northwest entrance.
Also among the captured forts may have been Bratton Camp near Westbury, the obvious refuge for inhabitants from the Trowbridge area when under threat. The Camp is easily visible from the ridge leading down to the crossing of the River Biss.

By 47 A.D, an informal border had been established between the conquered Roman territory and the rest of Britain, along the route of the future Fosse Way, the great Roman road running from Exeter to Lincoln. Thus the Trowbridge area would have come under Roman control within a couple of years or so of the invasion.

Bath has the greatest concentration of great Roman villas of the 3rd and 4th century in the country, and the recent discovery of the villa at Bradford on Avon, just 5km/3 miles from Trowbridge, shows that it is likely that these villas extended out into Wiltshire.

Although sherds of Roman pottery have been found in Trowbridge, as yet there has been no evidence of a Roman settlement. However Roman settlements have been found close by in many of the outlying villages and towns: in Hilperton, Staverton, Wingfield, Semington, Broughton Gifford as well as Westbury, Heywood and Dilton Marsh. The Roman villa/farm house with a rich mosaic floor, discovered recently in nearby Bradford-on Avon, was likely to have been built on profits from the wool trade, which in the 4th century made the West of England one of the most affluent parts of the country.

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King Alfred and the Viking threat

It is during the Saxon period that the real foundations of the town of Trowbridge can be identified. By the 7th century there may well have been simple Saxon buildings on an east to west route along what is now Roundstone Street and Silver Street.  These continued down to the River Biss.

However, by the 870s the Saxon control of England was under serious threat from the Vikings. Alfred, King of Wessex, was faced with a Danish army based in Chippenham. Alfred gathered a force of Wiltshire and Somerset men reinforced by men from Hampshire and faced the Danish army in battle at Ethandun, now identified as Edington, near Westbury.

Bearing in mind that the battle took place only some 10km/ 6 miles from the place that was to become Trowbridge, it is probable that the settlement provided thanes or freemen to fight for Alfred.

The Battle of Ethandun was one of the most crucial ever fought on English soil; Alfred’s victory ensured the survival of the kingdom of Wessex and also its language. It was from the kingdom of Wessex that England was to emerge and its language was to evolve into modern English.

The name Trowbridge refers to an early tree bridge that crossed the Biss.  Archaeological evidence shows that during the Saxon period, the Trowbridge settlement church had a nave 50% longer than the existing Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon and there are signs of an impressive timber house for the landowner. The discovery of Saxon loomweights shows that woollen cloth was being produced in Trowbridge. A reproduction loom from this time can be seen in Trowbridge Museum.

When the Domesday Book was compiled after the Norman Conquest, in 1086, the Trowbridge settlement first appears in the annals with its name in the corrupt form of `Straburg'. A Saxon, Brictric, held it. By then it must have been a place of some importance. Brictric was the most important landowner in Wiltshire, and Trowbridge appears to have been his main residence from which his estates were administered.

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Trowbridge Castle

Brictric was not to keep his lands for long. They soon became the property of Edward of Salisbury, the sheriff of Wiltshire.  The position of Sheriff was one of great power, normally held by a very important landowner. However at the command of King William Rufus, Edward's daughter Maud married Humphrey de Bohun, and the lands formerly owned by Brictric became part of the marriage settlement.

These lands became known as the honour of Trowbridge. De Bohun held them in return for providing some 30 knights for the king's army. The de Bohun lords, like other new Norman landowners, decided to build a castle. Castles such as the one in Trowbridge were invariably built in existing seats of power and came from the need to establish the new authority of the Normans.

Civil war erupted in England in 1135 when Henry I died without a son.  The de Bohun family declared for Henry I’s daughter, the Empress Matilda.  In 1137 Trowbridge castle was besieged by her cousin Stephen who had already been crowned as King. The castle’s garrison refused to submit despite a long struggle and the use of siege engines. Devizes was not so fortunate and fell to Stephen. When Stephen left Wiltshire, troops from the now rival castles of Trowbridge and Devizes  "assailed each other, they reduced all the surrounding country everywhere to a lamentable desert" - Gesta Stephani. There is evidence that Trowbridge was an important centre supporting Matilda. Coins were minted in the town by her chief supporter, Robert, Earl of Gloucester.

The civil war ended in 1154 with the death of Stephen and the succession of Matilda’s son, who became Henry II and founded the Plantagenet dynasty. During this period of stability Henry de Bohun sought to capitalize on the economic development in Trowbridge. In 1200 he obtained from King John the right to hold a market and a fair in Trowbridge; this is one of the first such grants recorded in the country.

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Disputes and the Magna Carta

Relations between the king and the de Bohun family swiftly deteriorated. King John supported his half brother's wife, Ela, Countess of Salisbury's suit to take the entire Trowbridge honour from the de Bohuns. It may have been this dispute that necessitated King John’s visits to Trowbridge in 1212 and 1215.

As a consequence of this, Henry de Bohun was to be one of the barons to oppose King John's rule, forcing him to accept the Magna Carta at Runymede, a document which included justice for all and the right to a trial by one’s peers. De Bohun was one of 25 barons who were trustees to ensure that the King complied with the Magna Carta.

As a component of the Magna Carta peace negotiations, the Trowbridge honour was restored to the de Bohuns. However after Henry de Bohun’s death in 1220, Trowbridge manor became the property of Ela, Countess of Salisbury.

It was through marriage that the manor eventually passed to the royal Duchy of Lancaster, with John of Gaunt in control.  He was one of the most powerful figures to become lord of the honour of Trowbridge, as he was effectively Regent of England during the childhood of Richard II.  Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke, seized the English throne from Richard in 1399 and Trowbridge then became part of the crown estates.

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Medieval Trowbridge flourishes

Despite the high level political infighting, Trowbridge had been developing unhindered. Burgage plots were created which craftsmen, tradesmen and artisans could rent and build houses on.  There is also evidence to show that Trowbridge was a small borough under the powerful lord of the Manor.

Trowbridge castle, which had shaped the layout of the town, was now falling into disrepair and disuse. By the beginning of the 14th century, the road which lay in front of the castle was developed. Fore Street followed the line of the castle ditch from the main gate down to the town bridge. Its continuation, Wicker Hill, may have been named after a wicker fence which formed part of the castle’s outer defences.

As the town evolved, plots in Castle Street and Silver Street were built on, whilst Back Lane, now known as Church Street, developed behind Fore Street. The market was held outside the former castle gates and the new church, to replace the former Saxon church, had been in use since the 12th century.

Although small, the town of Trowbridge was technically a borough; however, the combination of the powerful lords of the manor and its relative size made the development of corporate independence impossible. There has been a tavern on the site of the present George Inn since 1349, and it finally closed as a beer selling establishment in 1980.

In the 15th century a local nobleman from Heywood made his name through his royal connections. This was Baron Robert Willoughby de Broke, a close confidante of the exiled Henry Tudor. He was pivotal in Henry’s eventual triumph at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 which set the Tudor dynasty on the English throne. The new King, crowned Henry VII, made de Broke a Knight of the Garter and also appointed him Admiral of the Fleet.

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Wool and Clothiers in Tudor Times

Trowbridge’s development coincided with the expansion of the woollen cloth industry and by the middle of the 15th century James Terumber and John Wykes, two of the town's first known clothiers, appear in the public record. Upon their death, they bequeathed money to improve roads, rebuild the church and build an almshouse. When John Leland, the King’s antiquary, came to Trowbridge in 1543 he wrote “The towne is well buildid of stone…” and “…flourishith by drapery.” This shows that by the Tudor period Trowbridge was a wealthy town, attractive to a would-be lord of the manor. 

In 1536, Trowbridge was given by Henry VIII to his brother-in-law, Edward Seymour. Seymour, on Henry's death, became Lord Protector of his son and successor, Edward VI. Such high status in those dangerous days had its risks and Seymour was executed in 1552.

However, despite Seymour’s death, the manor remained in the family, with a descendent being created Baron Seymour of Trowbridge in 1641.  He had been educated at Trowbridge grammar school and Oxford which shows that a school of considerable status existed in the town, despite the opinion of outsiders. In 1569, the city of Salisbury had seized money intended for a school in Trowbridge, considering the place to be no more than “…an upland town with little resort of gentlemen and merchants.”

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Queens of England

Among the foremost clothiers of this period was Alexander Langford. His great granddaughter Mary married Henry Hyde in Trowbridge Parish church. With the advent of the Civil War between King Charles I and Parliament, their son, Sir Edward Hyde, accompanied the young prince Charles Stuart into exile, and was to make history by being one of the principal architects of the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. As Edward, Earl of Clarendon, he became chief minister to Charles II, and subsequently one of England’s greatest historians. He and his mother were buried in Westminster Abbey.

His daughter Anne Hyde married James, Duke of York, later James II, and became mother of the last Stuart monarchs, Queen Mary II and Queen Anne. A part of the Langford House still survives  at the top of Wicker Hill, hidden behind a later stone façade.
During the Civil War, unlike Edward Hyde, Trowbridge clothiers were probably inclined to support Parliament.  Trowbridge came under Royalist control following the battle at Roundway Down near Devizes in 1643, but eventually Parliament exerted control over the area, when a royalist force of 300 troopers and their commander were captured in an action near Steeple Ashton.  For a brief period in September 1645 Cromwell and an army of 5000 men were stationed in the town.

The woollen trade faced problems during this period so the local clothiers adapted their processes to produce ‘medley’ cloth. This was made from finer wool, which was dyed and mixed before being spun and woven and finished to a very high standard.  Both Trowbridge and Bradford on Avon became famous for this cloth and local man William Brewer was said to have "the greatest trade in medleys of any clothier in England".  In striving for high quality workmanship, Dutch work people, skilled in the woollen trade, were brought to the town and did much to improve it.

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Trowbridge bursts its boundaries

From 1660 Trowbridge expanded beyond its medieval boundaries. Duke Street was developed and cottages built on the waste at Stallard's Corner, Islington and at Lower, Middle and Upper Studley. The Conigre was also developed, as well as the courts, alleys and gardens behind the main town houses.
However, the condition under which the poorer working people lived was appalling. It is hardly surprising that the now relatively large working population was likely to erupt into riot and thus be viewed with fear by the rest of Wiltshire.
The non-conformist faith continued to develop in the town led by a growing number of Baptists. This had a restraining influence on unrest in the locality. Despite this Trowbridge was still viewed as troublesome. In 1796 barracks were built in Bradley Road to enable cavalry to be quartered in the town in case the populace became inflamed by French revolutionary ideas.
Someone who was definitely not a non-conformist was the Rector of St James’ Church, Matthew Hatton. By his death in 1758 he had risen to become Archbishop of Canterbury.

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The Town’s Best Buildings

By the 18th century the growth of the woollen industry in Trowbridge was such that numerous elegant Georgian buildings were erected between 1700 and 1730 for its rich clothiers.
The Parade is the finest row of clothiers' houses in the county.  These were described by Nikolaus Pevsner in his “The Buildings of England - Wiltshire” as "a stretch of palaces". He states that Trowbridge's buildings of the period are better than any in Bristol. The most notable is Parade House with its superbly decorated stone façade.

Another clothier's house, the Lloyds bank building in Fore Street, is said by Pevsner to be “so stately as to recall Genoa", and is reputed to be the most splendid Georgian building in Wiltshire. Richard Durman in his book "Classical Buildings of Wiltshire & Bath” comments, "The carving of the masonry, especially on the cornice and the panels, is of a richness that is rare outside Bath." One of the few important houses not to be built by a clothier is the present HSBC bank.

In the 18th century many of the cloth making processes took place either in workshops behind the clothiers' houses or in workers' homes. It was around 1790 that machinery first appeared initially for carding and spinning the wool, then, at the turn of the century, for raising the nap and shearing the finished cloth.
Weavers, however, still used handlooms, and the new weavers' houses in Newtown and Yerbury Street featured large windows to admit light to the top floor so work could be carried out in the home.
The woollen cloth was transported by packhorses and then by carriers, using carts. Clarks, in what is now Pitts in Silver Street, operated as carriers for much of the 18th century.
A Rector of St James’ Church at this time was Matthew Hutton who eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury. He died in 1758.

Mechanisation and the use of steam power were essential in Trowbridge because the Biss was not suitable for powering machinery. This technical development was to give the town a head start over its rivals in the woollen trade. As a consequence of this early mechanisation Trowbridge was to become more like an industrial town in West Yorkshire than a traditional Wiltshire market town.

The opening of the Kennet and Avon Canal in 1805 advanced steam power as there was ready access to the north Somerset coal fields.

Factories were established as a result of steam power; in 1808 Bridge Mills and Court Mills in 1812, and cottages were built in Mortimer Street so the workers could get to these factories easily.  Cradle Bridge was built in 1850 to make a wider route for them to access their work. The factories also attracted workers from the outlying countryside and in the first twenty years of the century, Trowbridge's population increased by nearly 40%. In 1821 Trowbridge became the largest urban centre in Wiltshire and was to remain so until 1871.

By 1820 there were around a dozen steam-driven factories. One of these factories had engines which were supplied by Boulton and Watt and one of their engine fitters, George Haden, was to settle in Trowbridge, acting as their agent.  Branching out from engines and textile machinery, the Haden firm began to specialise in central heating for large buildings such as stately homes, warehouses, hospitals and prisons. The company fitted warm air heating into the Houses of Parliament and into Windsor Castle, and as the century progressed, the Haden Company became one of the most important central heating companies in Europe.

It was during the first surge of mill construction that the remnants of the Castle site, long in decay, were removed.  Little evidence is now left; the suspicion must be that the residents of Trowbridge, with typical practical commonsense, decided to `re-cycle' what remained in buildings elsewhere in the town.

The impact of mechanisation caused problems among dispossessed workers, and as the popular poet, George Crabbe, (who was rector of Trowbridge from 1814 to 1832), known as the `poet of the poor', questioned, “if I were a master I would give up machinery. If I were a workman I would starve in quiet?"
The shearmen who finished the cloth were the best organized of the dispossessed workers, and the most opposed to mechanization. Littleton Mill near Semington was allegedly burnt down by a shearman.  For his supposed part in this, a young Trowbridge apprentice, Thomas Helliker was hanged in 1803. Helliker was widely thought to be innocent and has since been regarded as a trade union martyr and his story has now passed into both local and trade union folklore.

In such periods of unrest, the only place to put prisoners was the lock up, familiarly known as the blind house. The Trowbridge Blind House was built in 1757.  There was a police force in the town from 1839, and it was given a station in 1854.

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The Manchester of the West – “the richest town… from the Tweed to Tone”

Trade in the woollen industry was to be variable and after the initial prosperity from the mills, there was a slow decline, though there were still to be good times to come.

In Victorian times, the Trowbridge woollen industry was to owe its revival to focusing on quality cloth. There were some seventeen factories and three dyehouses operating in the town, which were said to contain "the largest manufactures of the superior class of fancy goods in England, if not in Europe."  Trowbridge was known as the "Manchester of the West" not only for manufacturing cloth but also for marketing it through substantial warehouses in the town.

One writer described the Trowbridge of 1850 as “the richest town for its size from the Tweed to the Tone” He went on to say “Shrewd to plan, persevering in carrying out, intelligent thinkers and ceaseless workers, you must rise early to catch a Trowbridge man napping. You may do business with them at six o’clock in the morning, and you may see the same men again at their desks at seven in the evening, their faculties unfagged by 13 hours work.”

The development of Trowbridge as a major woollen town was driven by such clothiers as Sir Roger Brown. He visited the northern textile areas in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and as a consequence decided to increase the mechanisation of his Trowbridge mills. This was to be a key factor in ensuring the success of his firm, and the prosperity of the town during the latter half of the 19th century. At one point Ashton Mill had over 1000 operatives.

Textile production was thirsty work and Thomas Usher began brewing beer in Back Street in 1824. Other entrepreneurs set up businesses to serve the growing population including Abraham Bowyer, bacon curer. The business started by Bowyer eventually became a producer on a national scale.

Trowbridge's first local newspaper, started by Benjamin Lansdown in 1854, was to become the Wiltshire Times in 1880.  This enabled its residents to give vent to complaints about the town environment.

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Urban Improvements

From 1752 Trowbridge’s main roads had been managed by Turnpike Trustees, then in 1799 'Improvement Commissioners' were set up to pave, light and clean the streets and to provide watchmen. A public cemetery superseded the overcrowded graveyards in 1856. Eight years later a local board of health was set up to provide a sewerage system, clean the town and work on other improvements. The town relied on public pumps for drinking water, such as the one at the town bridge and it was not until 1874 that there was an adequate piped water supply. The provision of gas for lighting had come earlier for the more affluent, in 1824. The railway which made a real impact on the town's development came in 1848; its station was designed by Brunel (this was subsequently demolished).  A market hall was built by William Stancomb in 1861.

Although Trowbridge’s population only grew by just over ten per cent in the century from 1831 to 1931 the actual size of the town had expanded considerably.  The increased prosperity encouraged its residents to move out of the crowded town centre into terraces of small houses that had been specifically built for the factory workers. From 1850 to 1870 the area between Newtown and Frome Road including Park Street and Bond Street and the area of Harford Street and Ashton Street, and Dursley Road were built.

Large houses were built to the north east of the town, along Hilperton Road from 1790 onwards, with Victoria Road being built in 1860.  Somewhat smaller houses were built in Wingfield and West Ashton Road. For the less affluent, Clarendon Road and Westbourne Avenue and Road were built in the 1870s and 90s, along with the eastern side of Newtown. By the end of the nineteenth century many of the slum dwellings had been demolished.

As Trowbridge had been part of a manor controlled by a powerful lord, it did not have a corporation, a local body of citizens to oversee the town. The Board of Health, to which local residents were elected, had been established in 1864 and this was converted into an Urban District Council in 1894. However, political life had not been stagnant. Trowbridge was the centre of Chartist activity in Wiltshire in the 1830s.

Time for School

At the beginning of the 19th century the major centre of education in Trowbridge was the Free School in the St James' churchyard, run by the Church of England but also taking the boys of non-conformist families.  Church of England schools were provided, Parochial in 1846, at Studley in 1854 and Park Street in 1872.  At that time Trowbridge was strongly non-conformist and many people felt their children were being exposed to C. of E. doctrine. Local clothiers gave money towards the building of British Schools in Frog Lane or British Row in 1832 and Newtown in 1900.

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Trowbridge Inventors

At this period in her history, Britain was renowned for her inventors, and several major figures came from Trowbridge. Amongst these was a man who probably had more impact on the workplace than the modern day computer; Sir Isaac Pitman. Pitman invented the most widely used of all the systems of shorthand. Shorthand enabled managers to dictate correspondence at speed, with their words subsequently being produced in copperplate writing and later in type by their secretaries.

Pitman’s new system of shorthand gave managers more time to concentrate on improving productivity, thus benefiting their own companies as well as the general economy.
Isaac Pitman was not the only inventor in the family; his brother Ben invented an electrochemical process of relief engraving.

Another successful local inventor was Trowbridge engineer John Dyer who made a major breakthrough with the invention of the rotary fulling machine in 1833, a version of which is still used today. In 1869 and 1870 another Trowbridge resident, William Millard, patented his improvements to power looms.

One of the most prolific and successful industrial inventors from Trowbridge was George Haden. He patented numerous inventions for improving the production of woollen cloth but he was most successful in the heating and ventilation of buildings. In 1826 the Haden company provided a heating system for Windsor Castle at the request of King George IV.

This success was followed up by the installation of heating systems for numerous stately homes such as the local Wilton House, as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Palace at Lambeth. A great number of public buildings, including the Houses of Parliament and the British Museum Reading Room, were heated or ventilated by Hadens of Trowbridge.

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New industries in Trowbridge

However the heyday of the woollen industry did not last and as it declined other businesses and industries developed.  Byproducts from the woollen trade gave rise to the manufacture of mattresses, and thence to bed making by the firm Chapman. Chapman's, Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk and Bowyers, used the former mill buildings for manufacturing and food processing, giving new breadth to Trowbridge's economy. Ushers Brewery developed into one of the largest breweries in the Southwest.
After the Second World War there were only five cloth mills operating in the town. The last one closed in 1982 and the building now houses Trowbridge Museum which opened in 1990.

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Trowbridge becomes the County Town

The railways made Trowbridge the easiest place for representatives from across the county to meet.

Sir Roger Brown became the driving force behind the growing ‘de facto’ recognition of Trowbridge as the County Town. When he gave the Town Hall to Trowbridge, it was as a meeting place for the proposed Wiltshire County Council. The Council built its first offices in the town in 1898 and decided that all its future meetings should be held here in 1900. The current County Hall building was completed in 1940.

During the Second World War Trowbridge engineering firms produced parts for the Spitfire aircraft.

Sacrifices were made and many fine railings were removed to aid the war effort. British and American troops were billeted at the Barracks. Trowbridge was hit by a few bombs, the most notable partly demolishing Bridge House, killing two people at The Bear and knocking the roof off the Blind House.

After the Second World War there was industrial expansion at Ladydown at Canal Road and at the Barracks (now Yeoman Way). This enabled firms to move out of their cramped premises in town and into larger, more modern factories. These firms included Airsprung (formerly Chapman's) and Walden's meat and dairy products company.

Before the war, housing provided by the Urban District Council was built at Pitman Avenue, Studley Rise and at Longfield and what was later called the Seymour Estate. Other housing was built along Frome and Bradley Roads, and at Rutland Crescent, The Croft, and Clarendon Avenue. After the war the Studley Green estate was built, along with later expansion into Green Lane and most recently Paxcroft Mead. After a period of stagnation in the 1960s, the town’s population expanded from 13,844 in 1951 to 22,984 in 1981.

Trowbridge’s first major retail development was in 1975 when the former cattle market became the site for the Castle Place Market and Shopping Centre, serviced by the multi-storey car park. The building of the Shires Shopping Centre in the late 1980s with a 1000 place car park, was the major stimulus to Trowbridge becoming a sub-regional retail centre of real importance, serving a large part of Wiltshire, north Somerset and beyond. From 1993 onwards there were the developments of out of town retail warehouse parks on the Bradley Road.

In the 1980s the White Horse Business Park in Trowbridge was built to encourage new businesses to the town. It attracted such companies as Virgin Mobile, now the biggest employer in the town, and Vodafone, the largest company in Britain.  Takeovers by Nutricia, Apetito and Northern Foods have ensured that food production is still a major element of the Trowbridge economy, employing well over 2000 people.

Other major manufacturers in the town include Axxis International and recently arrived Trelleborg Automotive UK Ltd.

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The Future

By 2011 it is predicted that Trowbridge’s population will reach 47,000 [currently 39,000] making it the largest community in Wiltshire except Swindon.  In the new Wiltshire Structure Plan Trowbridge is designed as a Centre for growth and is set to become a major sub-regional centre.

The town has come a long way from the seventh century when it comprised a small, straggling row of Saxon hovels leading down to a tree bridge. Its clothiers’ houses have been taken to illustrate that "the finest houses in provincial towns were the products of trade and commerce, of local industry and of professionals" in a national survey, “Houses and History”.

  

The town’s industrial heritage has largely been preserved in the opinion of the acknowledged authority on the Woollen Industry of the South West, K.H.Rogers, “it would be probably difficult to find anywhere else in the country (and so the world) within a space of a quarter of a mile, a water-driven factory c.1800.and steam-driven factories of 1815, 1828-36 and 1860, all in their original condition.” These are all very important industrial heritage sites, with the potential to create “an open-air museum of national importance”.

Trowbridge has never been pre-occupied with its past, which is perhaps why it has not been given the attention and celebration that it deserves. Looking forward, the transformation of Trowbridge town centre was held up as a national model of success at the London Quality Streetscapes urban design conference "Making Places out of Spaces" in May 2003.

The town looks set to achieve vigorous economic and social development in the years to come. However perhaps the most interesting facet to emerge in the course of producing this brief history, is Trowbridge’s tradition of sturdy independence of mind, that its inhabitants are willing and able to stand up for themselves and their town, a tradition that continues to this day.

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March 2006: 70th Anniversary of the Spitfire!

The important role Trowbridge played during the Second World War has not been well publicised, and except for those who lived in the town at that time, has been largely forgotten. Trowbridge’s industrial strength came into its own as one of the major centres for Spitfire production in Southern England. The prototype (K5054) first flew on March 5, 1936.

The original Spitfire manufacture took place in Southampton, but this well known location made it vulnerable to enemy attack. It was decided to disperse the Spitfire production to five selected areas, to Trowbridge, Salisbury, Reading and Newbury, with some production remaining in Southampton. In time this dispersal meant that each of the areas developed its own self-contained Spitfire production unit.

In October 1940 tooling and jigs for building the aircraft arrived in Trowbridge on low-loaders and lorries from Southampton. To start with production was set up at three sites, on the present Boots site in Fore Street, at Bradley Road, close to where the car wash is now situated, and at the Barnes steamroller works in Southwick. The present Bargain Box site also was soon commandeered.

These make shift factories manufactured parts for a couple of years until a large purpose built factory was built in Bradley Road. This enabled complete aircraft to be produced in Trowbridge for the first time. Another smaller factory was also built on Hilperton Road, where Kenton Drive now stands.

The body and the wings were built in the Bradley Road factory, with other parts assembled elsewhere in the town and being brought to the main factory to be installed. When complete, the fuselage, with its wings laying along side, were transported on long, so-called Queen Mary low loaders to a purpose built hangar at Keevil. There the wings and propeller were attached and the aircraft made ready for action. From Keevil female pilots would fly the now complete aircraft to the airfields where they were needed for active service.

During the War Trowbridge built the Mark V, IX, XII and XIV Spitfire, including from 1944 the Griffon-powered version, as well as parts for the Supermarine 371.

Production continued at the Bradley Road factory after the War, when as part of Vickers-Supermarine Ltd, it was involved in the production of the Spitfire Mark 24, the Spiteful and the naval Seafang. It was not until the end of the 1950s that the factory was eventually sold to the engineering firm Hattersley Heaton. Eventually when that factory closed, the old wartime building was demolished to make way for one of the present retail parks in Bradley Road

At least eight of the Spitfires built in Trowbridge still survive, four of which were found in India in the 1970s! One of these still appears in flying displays, some sixty years after it was built.

The Trowbridge connection with the aircraft that did so much to symbolise British determination and resistance during the Second World War is commemorated in the names of the two retail parks in Bradley Road, the Spitfire Park and the Merlin Park, Merlin being the name of the Spitfire engine.

For those interested in discovering more about Trowbridge’s role in Spitfire production, Wiltshire Airfields in the Second World War by David Berryman offers a much more detailed account.