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), and for centuries animosity between the two towns was very real.
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.
The hilltop has a strong natural defence, steep-sided with a plateau-like summit. In the past the surrounding rivers were wide and deep, and to this stronghold inhabitants added walls, banks and stockades. These defences were added to and restored throughout the town's history, until the end of the Civil War in the mid seventeenth century. Until that time Malmesbury was a walled town with gates, to regulate the comings and goings of the people of this important and busy market town, but at the time of the Commonwealth the defences were slighted and were never to be rebuilt.
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.
In the last century Malmesbury has grown and grown 'like Topsy', more than doubling its population in less than 100 years. Still it retains its special qualities and it is difficult to maintain the balance. The town is essentially rural, variously called the 'Queen of hill top towns' and the 'jewel of North Wiltshire' and it is crucial that it does not lose its identity. It is important for the town to develop, and grow if it must, but only within that sustainable framework. Future townspeople must continue the work of previous generations, conserving and cherishing that which is good. Future development must be sensitively designed to continue the homogeny of what we now have.
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The Market Cross was built at the end of the 15th Century and was, according to a quote of the time "a place for poor folkes to stand when the rain cometh." Today it remains one of the finest examples of its kind in England.
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