Veg Plotting

Since March this year I've been attending a Zumba dance class at Hardenhuish school. This takes place in the gym which has the typical look and smell of any school gym built in the 1950s or 60s. Despite that, the class is a lot of fun - it's a bit like aerobics, with lots of moves from salsa/ Greek/ Bollywood / belly dancing thrown in for good measure. I'm useless at it because it moves so fast, but I reckon that jumping around for an hour looking silly (and giggling a lot) has to be doing some good. Whilst the school dates from the 1950s with various additions across the decades, the grounds are much older. They house the pictured rather stately Hardenhuish House and the grounds are the parkland of its former estate which still retain much of the feel of those grander times. The estate has been nibbled around the edges somewhat: part of it is now the Donkey Field which we encountered for the letter D and you've also seen the rather fine St Nicholas' Chur...

The Yelde Hall is one of the oldest and most striking of Chippenham's buildings and you've seen glimpses of it already, filed under T for Tourism and Q for Quaint . It also has a version of U for Unity and Loyalty : the badge you can see at the top of the building over the steps to the right is an older version of the town's coat of arms. Yelde is another form of the word Guild, showing that it was an important building in the town: the place where much of the Chippenham's business and justice was administered until the town council moved to its current premises down the high street in 1841. In the 1500s it was rented to the town's bailiff and burgesses, though the building itself is believed to date back the the 1400s. Don't be fooled by the date on the building above the coat of arms: this is believed to date one of the earlier renovations of the building in 1776. The Yelde Hall has 2 floors and several rooms. Upstairs was used as the council ...

If anyone needs an X-Ray in Chippenham, then they go to our local hospital, St. Andrews aka Chippenham Community Hospital . Luckily NAH and I have only had to avail ourselves of this facility a couple of times between the two of us. If you click to enlarge the picture, you'll see the blue sign on the left is directing you to the X-Ray department. Whilst I'm pleased I haven't had to go there that often, I'm also glad we have a small hospital in the town, where on the couple of occasions I've had to go to the minor injuries unit, my GP has been in attendance. When I've had to go to Bristol or Bath instead, I've hated the depersonalisation going to such a large facility brings, even though I know full well to have done so in Chippenham would be uneconomic. However, in much earlier times no-one would have been glad to go to the pictured building as it was Chippenham's workhouse . Built in 1858-9, it would have been considered the place of last resort...

Last week we saw how Brunel has left his mark on Chippenham in 1841 in the shape of a viaduct. The coming of the railway here led to a profitable railway supply industry springing up in the mid 1800s, which continues today. Various companies have come and gone (Rowland Brotherhood -->, Evans O'Donnell -->, Saxby and Farmer), but the main name connected with railways and Chippenham today is Westinghouse. Those of you across the pond are probably more familiar with George Westinghouse than most people over here as he was an entrepreneur and pioneer of the electrical industry in the USA, whose development of the alternating current system eventually prevailed over Edison's direct current system. He also was the inventor of the air brake and had an interest in railway signalling amongst many other things. This led him to make an alliance with a British signalling company in the late 19th century based in Worcester. This is turn merged with Saxby and Farmer to form t...

With this stonking great V iaduct dominating its centre, there's no escaping that one of Chippenham's various identities is that of a railway town. Built by Brunel (the subject of the letter I in this series) in 1841, it's one of the architectural wonders of his Great Western Railway. The structure also sports a blue plaque similar to the one I showed you in the above link. It's a listed building and as it forms the gateway to Chippenham, it was decided to illuminate it at night as the town's nod towards celebrating the Millennium. Seeing our local bypass is no longer lit from midnight until the early hours, I suspect the viaduct's lighting has been included in this cutback too. Whilst it might be an architectural wonder, I believe it's too dominant of much of our town's central space. I've often wondered if some of the ideas at Kilver Court could be used to soften its edges. Of course this would need to be tempered with the requirement no...

Unity and Loyalty is Chippenham's motto and as you can see also appears on the town's coat of arms which was granted by charter in 1554 by Queen Mary. Chippenham was a royal manor in Saxon times, with the important right to send a burgess to parliament (mentioned in 1295) and to hold a market on Wednesday, plus a fair on St Andrew's day granted during the reign of King John (1199-1216). However, by Tudor times the authority of the town's steward was being challenged by other local landlords and tenants because Chippenham's high status wasn't properly documented. This led to a petition to Queen Mary to clarify the steward's authority, which resulted in her granting the town's charter on the 2nd May 1554, together with 217 acres of land and the right to send 2 burgess to parliament. The land is today called the Chippenham Borough Lands and some of the income from the remaining 70 acres is distributed to local charities, good causes and projects each year ...

The entrance to Chippenham Tourist Information Chippenham is often described as a market town, but since the demise of the cattle market a few years ago, this seems a little out of date these days. It's also a town set to grow, so there's fears it may just become a dormitory town. There's other claims to its classification (see W coming soon for one of them), but today I'm more concerned with looking at Chippenham as an ideal base for tourism. Doing this themed ABC has helped me to start to revise my feelings about the town: there's much to commend it, but I have to honestly say it's a place which has much greater riches surrounding it. Within a 15 minute drive there's the National Trust village of Lacock to explore, not only a pretty village in its own right, but with links to both the Harry Potter films and early pioneering photography. There's also Castle Combe , the oft called 'prettiest village in England' and Corsham with its ...

This Bank Holiday weekend sees Chippenham filled with strangely dressed characters bedecked with ribbons and bells and waving handkerchiefs, sticks or swords at each other. It can only mean it's time for Chippenham Folk Festival . As well as a multitude of morris dancing sides and other folk dancers, there's various bands and singers, including Steeleye Span who'll be the headlining act on Monday night. They also played at the first festival in 1971 when they were a relatively unknown band. The first festival was held in Lacock and the organisers quickly realised its popularity meant making it a dual location event by including Chippenham was needed. Its continued growth led to Chippenham becoming the sole location in 1984, the year we moved into the area. There's plenty of ceilidhs and performances to enjoy, though I do like just wandering around the High Street watching the morris dancers perform and catching other impromptu performances in a pub or at Monkt...

Rowden is one of the oldest parts of Chippenham and you've visited here before when we looked at Eddie Cochrane for the letter E . The pictured map shows central Chippenham mainly to the right of the page and Rowden to the bottom left. You'll also see an area called Lowden to the centre and top left of the picture. Rowden and Lowden, together with Sheldon - which would be even further to the left if the map extended that far - are some of the areas of land which originally formed the royal manor of Chippenham. In the 12th century this was divided into parcels of land and thus the manors of Lowden, Rowden and Sheldon were born. In addition, there was the town of Chippenham, which for some reason was attached to Sheldon Manor despite it being the most westerly of the three. Other parcels of land were granted to religious houses, such as the lands which eventually became Monkton Manor (top right) and Allington (not pictured). During the middle ages Sheldon Manor was the most pro...

Quaint* might not be the word which immediately springs to mind when describing Chippenham to someone unfamiliar with the town. It's grown so much since we moved here and the bulk of the population now live in sprawling new housing estates. However, an observant walk in the centre of town soon reveals little details like this water fountain I found at the side of a very quaint old building. The latter won't be revealed to you until we get to the letter Y ... Quaintness can be found down much of the High Street and surrounding side streets and alleyways, especially if the modern shop frontages at street level are ignored and the eye wanders upwards to look at the original architecture. It's these details combined with the mellow stone of many of the buildings which prompted visitors to describe Chippenham as 'Little Bath' This is for ABC Wednesday and forms my 17th themed post about Chippenham. * = Quaint is defined in my copy of The Penguin English Dictionary as ...

Tomorrow's an historic day as the nation decides via a referendum (the first we've had in over 30 years) whether to stick with the first past the post system for electing its MPs or to try the AV system, where we rank the candidates in order of preference. I'm not going to go into the fors and againsts with this decision. What's more interesting for ABC Wednesday is that since we've moved to Chippenham, we've had some rather unusual locations in which to mark our ballot papers. When we moved to Pewsham in 1988, the local school was yet to be built so our polling station was a house in Buckingham Road. We'd register in the kitchen, then move into the lounge for the actual voting. Sadly coffee wasn't served at the time, though it felt like it should be. Here in Cepen Park North again there's no school, hall or other public building available to host the polling station. When we first moved here the back of the staff area at Safeway (now Morris...

I've spent quite a bit of time delving into Chippenham's ancient past, but today I'm looking at something much more recent: The Olympiad sports centre . When we moved to Chippenham in 1984, this place was yet to come into existence. Instead we had a wonderful 55 yard long outdoor pool in Monkton Park to lounge around in the centre of Chippenham. Around this time NAH also took up competitive swimming again - initially swimming for nearby Corsham - but then switching his allegiance to Chippenham soon afterwards*. I quite often joined him on training sessions too (we did meet in a swimming pool after all) and in the summer some of these were held at the outdoor pool. This was fine most of the time, but backstroke was always a little tricky. Following a cloud isn't quite the same as following the lines usually found on the ceilings of indoor pools and I usually ended up in tangled mess with a lane rope ;) However, in the mid 1980s it was announced the outdo...

Nestlé is no more in Chippenham, but here's its old factory by the side of the River Avon in the centre of town. It's called Avonbridge House these days and was converted into offices in 1985. If you ever ate condensed milk before 1962 here in the UK (and elsewhere in the world if you bought the Milkmaid or Carnation brand ), then it would have been made and canned in this very building. It was the oldest milk condensery in the world and the building dates back to 1873. Chippenham is often thought of as an old woollen, market or railway town, but until recently it was also a major player in food production. Besides providing the condensed milk for our Saturday night teatime treats, Oxo cubes also hailed from Chippenham until 1975 and if you remember all the furore over whether ham imported from Parma and sliced in this country could be called Parma ham, well it was the former Hygrade factory just over the road which was at the centre of that particular ...

I've stepped out of Chippenham today to take you to nearby Kellaways to show you the most dramatic feature of Maud Heath's Causeway as it crosses over the River Avon. The causeway links Wick Hill to Chippenham and was a philanthropic gesture made by Maud Heath in 1474. The story goes that she was rather fed up of getting her feet wet when travelling to Chippenham Market to sell her eggs. She bequeathed funds upon her death to build and maintain a footpath from her home into town just over three miles away so that future travellers to market might arrive dry shod. As you can see the raised pathway is much longer than the width of the river at this point, but takes winter flooding into account. The trees in the centre of the main picture are screening a monument erected in Maud Heath's honour in 1698.  It has a sundial on each side and Chippenham Clift and Wick Hill are inscribed on the 2 sides facing each destination. The side to the right of t...

I was really pleased to see this sign outside the station cafe last week. I believe Chippenham to be slightly slower on the uptake re locally sourced produce and food miles than some of the other towns nearby. There are a few notable exceptions: the farm shop close to where I live for one, plus the greengrocer in town sells produce from our local market gardeners in Bromham whenever possible. Sheldon School has had a March food festival as a pupil led fund raiser the past couple of years. The Revolutions restaurant uses fresh, seasonal local produce, as does the recently opened Bridge Brasserie across the road. In fact they cheekily tweeted they'd take any spare garlic of mine when I said I had an excess of it recently ;) Steamers shows just why station cafes should be independent. Thank goodness Chippenham station is too small to have received the attentions of the chains found elsewhere. I love the play on words with the cafe's name; the regularly changed art displ...

The building in front of you is the Chippenham Museum , not far from the Buttercross which we looked at for the letter B. What makes this of interest for the letter K is the plaque on the wall, which you can just see to the top left of the lady walking past. You see the legendary King Alfred was here: he of burnt cakes fame. He was king of Wessex - one of the realms of England during the Dark Ages - and one of the more famous ones of those times. During these times Chippenham was a villa regia aka a royal estate with a hunting lodge. The king would bring his court here to stay for hunting in the surrounding rich forest and also preside over matters of justice. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle states that the Anglo Saxon Witan , or parliament was held in Chippenham in 933. During the ninth century, the kingdom of Wessex was under threat from Danish Vikings, who'd already captured the other three Anglo Saxon kingdoms. In 878, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle says: This year, abou...

I've often wondered who exactly John Coles was and now have the answer courtesy of my research for today's post. He was a pharmacist who owned a pharmacy and general grocer's store at the top of the town where Coates' flower shop is now. There he made medicines, invalid wines and other products such as garish dyes, furniture polish, insect powder and 'Chippenham Scour Mixture', a cattle remedy. He was a keen supporter of secondary education and was Chippenham's Lord Mayor three times in 1891, 1898 and 1914, so he must have been well respected during his lifetime. On his death in 1916 he left a legacy to the then Chippenham Borough which they used to purchase a suitable plot of land for the provision of a public park. When I was researching D for Donkey Field , the purchase of this land was also documented in the papers I was looking at: just over £4,000 for 15 acres of former farm land. John Coles Park opened in 1923, which I believe makes it one o...

Thanks to the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel , Chippenham is a railway town. He decided that his Great Western Railway line from London to Bristol - nicknamed 'Brunel's billiard table' at the time because the line is relatively flat compared to others in the UK - would be routed through the town and was also based here for a while whilst it was being built. When you visit many of our towns and cities, places of heritage are often marked with a blue plaque like the one above. The temporary presence of one of our greatest Britons ever was deemed to be of significance by the Civic Society. The plaque is placed on a small building to the side of the railway station. This was Brunel's office which he used whilst supervising the works in Chippenham and the surrounding area . He left quite a mark on the town in 1841, but you'll have to wait until a later letter to see exactly what that was... This is for ABC Wednesday and is the ninth in my themed round of posts...

It's been really hard choosing this week's H because there are quite a few good ones to choose from as far as Chippenham's concerned. In the end I plumped for the History Centre because I went there for the first time whilst researching D for Donkey Field . As you can see the centre is for the whole of Wiltshire and is one of the latest (and largest) public buildings to be built in the town. It's built on part of the old cattle market (which closed in 2004) close to the railway station and opened to the public in October 2007. The move of the various records held at Trowbridge (our county town) and Salisbury to Chippenham was quite controversial at the time because whilst Chippenham has relatively good transport links, it's neither in the centre of Wiltshire, nor is it the largest (which is Swindon) or the county town. The History Centre is the focal point for all heritage services relating to Wiltshire and Swindon which includes the collections of the county'...

I have a confession to make: what you're looking at isn't Goldiggers at all. It's 'son of Goldiggers', the development which replaced it in 2005. When we moved to Chippenham in 1984, Goldiggers was the place to be at weekends. You might have 'been' there too as it was frequently where Sight and Sound In Concert was recorded for BBC TV in the 1980s. Goldiggers started life as the Gaumont cinema, an Art Deco building designed by the cinema architect W E Trent which opened in 1936. It was then was converted to a popular nightclub/concert venue in the 1970s and was owned by Sir Richard Branson in the 1980s. It also housed The Bit on the Side , a bar which had a trompe l'oeile painting on the outside wall. Inside was a place which drew thousands of clubbers from around the country plus very well-known bands to perform there such as The Smiths , The Boomtown Rats and The Style Council ( here's a longer list for your perusal). This video shows the l...