Great Western Coffee Shop

.....could this be holding back the Transwilts? 🙂

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/trowbridge-online-criticism-review-wiltshire-2615385

Trowbridge has long been the butt of jokes and of more serious comment too.  The joke is of it being chosen as the county town over Devizes to offer the place some jobs / help its economy is probably wide of the mark - according to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiltshire_County_Council ) it was chosen over the geographically central Devizes "on the grounds that it was better served by rail services".

Also on a more serious note, Trowbridge to this day is not one of the more affluent Wiltshire communities.  Some wards elsewhere in the county have 1.98 private vehicles per household on average and I recall Trowbridge figures (link not to hand at the moment) around 35% to 40% lower.  Households without a single private vehicle are around the 20% mark, as compared to the 3% or 4% in some of the richer and rural wards.

The lower car ownership puts Trowbridge into a rather good place when it comes to the future - with people using public transport already and much of that being established.  For sure, switching from fossil fuel to electric cars will clean up the air, but I suspect that we would like to see more that a switch from queues of dirty cars to queues of clean cars.

At one point, Trowbridge was (I recall) statistically the third most dangerous / violent of GWR managed stations - but I  would hazard a guess that it's much improved now.   Feels it to me.   Growth has been excellent, with more to come - MetroWest with an extra service into Bristol every hour.

I also look forward to former colleagues at TransWilts helping deliver the two-hourly then hourly services through from the Solent area to Swindon and perhaps on to Oxford.  Although Swindon is not in the administrative Wiltshire area, it remains a huge draw from Trowbridge and the current train service is poor (with gaps increased up to 150 minutes from this December) and doesn't run at all in the evening.  In the other direction, direct trains to an airport (Southampton) will be a huge business boost. 

I've always been puzzled as to how "County Towns" are chosen - in Devon it's Exeter (County Council HQ, Cathedral, top University) despite Plymouth being much larger and more strategically significant.

Are there any hard and fast rules or do the County Council simply decide?

I don't think think county towns still exist in reality, and Wikipedia suggests the same saying they are unofficial. But what would it mean if there were such a thing, now or in the past? Presumably it would tell you where all the central functions of a county were located, and that in turn would imply that they were all in the same town. But a lot has changed since kings were represented locally by Earls...

Anyway, I consulted my copy of Dyche's Dictionary (16th edition, MDCCLXXVII) which includes gazetteer entries for towns and counties. Unfortunately, while it names some towns as shire-towns it doesn't tell you what they are for each county. So while it is rather complimentary about Wiltshire, I can't see any town given as its shire-town. It mentions borough-towns like Devizes and Marlborough, and even Wilton though in that case it "was formerly the shire-town, but now a place of little note". It has no entry for Trowbridge (nor Melksham, for that matter).

The name "Wiltshire" derives from "Wilton"

Your quote from the 16th Century - "of little note" has been somewhat overtaken,  and I would suggest that there are some elements note in Wilton again these days.   Wilton House, the outlet centre, a major and growing housing area are added to some of the old remains in the town centre.  It's an excellent park and ride for drivers coming in from a wide area north and west of Salisbury who don't want to face the city's jammed roads and parking hassle, and could be so much more as a park and ride for those headed beyond Salisbury to if when the stations (is/are) re-opened.

Abingdon used to the county town of Berkshire - now it is not even in the county (and hasn't got a railway anymore).

There is no real definition of what makes a county town - historically it seems to be more on where the County Assizes were held rather than any form of local government. In Berkshire for a long time these were split between Reading and Abingdon, as were a number of other county functions such as gaols.

Abingdon is attemting to expand to annexe Radley to regain a station.

No problem of which county Bristol is in, Bristol is a City and County in its own rights by virtue of a Royal Proclamation by some King in the medieval  times.

Yes, it's worth remembering that larger towns and cities preferred not belong to a county at all, so as to keep their own taxes and independence. Dyche's calls Bristol a "county incorporate", but Southampton is a "county borough" - even in 1777 (need to debug your romanToInt(self, roman)?) a term that didn't come into official use until 100 years later.

Salisbury and Winchester never managed that degree of separation, but of course were major centres for the church when it was a parallel administration in some respects. For some reason that dictated the organisation of other (non-church) courts much later, notably coroners'. Thus the inquest reports for two of my Mum's great uncles were or are in odd places - one* died in Westminster, so his is now in the muniments room of Westminster Abbey, the other** took his own life in Otley (Suffolk!) which was part of the Liberty of St Etheldreda, run from Ely cathedral and nothing to do with Suffolk.

PS: I left out the dates - *1886 and **1926

Ironically, I recall reading that when county councils were established in the late 19th century, Reading was selected as the seat of county government over Abingdon because the former initially spurned the railway, and ended up at the end of a small branch whereas Reading by then had excellent direct rail connections with most of the county. As a focus of its (no longer administrative) county there are few "county towns" as well positioned as Reading - all the dafter that the county was one of the first to be deconstructed into unitary authorities in the 1990s.

Trowbridge always strikes me as pleasant enough whenever I've visited. Mind you, I've never used the station so I've no idea about the violence at that particular location. Certainly market towns like Trowbridge can get 'lively' on a Saturday night. But the Wiltshire town that seems rather lacking in attraction to me is Westbury (nevertheless, I enjoyed the Coffee Shop, er, forum there last month ;)). And even Westbury has a white horse to redeem it!

As for county towns, I remember seeing a 19th-century gazetteer which distinguished between county towns and county capitals. Unfortunately I can't remember what either of them was for Wilts.

Indeed. Bristol was a county long before it was a city; it was granted county status in 1373, but didn't become a city until 1542. Somehow that makes it all the more irksome when people (or poorly-written IT systems) assign it to Gloucester, Avon or - heaven forfend - Somerset...

Hey! What's the matter with Somerset? :-* :P ;D

Most Wiltshire towns have their attractions if you know where to look - from "The Handle House - the last surviving teasel drying wind stove in the country" to "The Pool hall is decorated with Victorian era design with large iron roof joists each carrying a coat of arms" (one of those is Trowbridge and the other is Westbury)

Welsh borders  ;)

Everywhere does, really. And I'm intrigued by the teasel drying wind stove!

I was as well so looked it up ;D: https://www.trowbridgemuseum.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Fact-Sheet-6-Finishing-the-Cloth.pdf

There is one on the Wells Road out of Shepton Mallett, I remember seeing it a few years ago. It is still to be seen on Google Street View

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shepton_Mallet,_Darshill_House_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1223404.jpg

That's fascinating! I knew all about teasels for carding, having grown up in Stroud, where everything gets very woolly, but have never seen anything like that in the mills there. I wonder if it was a particularly Wiltshire thing? Or possibly the Frome valley mills mechanised earlier and all their "wind stoves" were demolished/converted to other uses? Or maybe, being a steep-sided valley, they didn't have enough wind? Then again, it could be that I've just never noticed them...

There is a tower in Brimscombe, I think it's visible from the railway to the east of Stroud, called the Frogmarsh Tower, which I understand to have been used for storing teasels but I'm sure it doesn't have those open sides.

Sorry for the geographical diversion, let's get back to Trowbridge!

Here is a brief reference the teasel drying houses in the Cotswolds

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=t5ckDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT80&lpg=PT80&dq=teasel+handle+houses&source=bl&ots=gKrvPU8Qlp&sig=ACfU3U3k8PZS3WeV0zN9VMm8IMj1eN5f3A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ7sf8ifrgAhVKThUIHVmVA2s4ChDoATABegQIBxAB#v=onepage&q=teasel%20handle%20houses&f=false

I think Trowbridge's shopping area based around the pedestrianised street is far more pleasant than some towns I won't mention here, while it has a lovely park right in the centre and the wonderful old town hall, which has huge potential if sufficient money can be found. I suspect it is on the way up, as the increasing non-affordability of Bath and Bristol is driving many people into seeking out towns like this to move to, especially those with good rail services.

An email earlier today about another community, talking about something being on a roundabout, reminded me that Trowbridge has both a church (Holy Trinity) and a pub (or is it just the car park for the pub - The Lamb) on roundabouts.

Only the pub car park.  I went in the Lamb on numerous occasions during my working days and it is definitely not in the middle of the roundabout

Trowbridge now being discussed on BBC Wiltshire.

https://twitter.com/BBCWiltshire/status/1105364932474880005 (https://twitter.com/BBCWiltshire/status/1105364932474880005)

I note that someone has tried to equate Melksham with Trowbridge now....

Lots of other places being offered up for the award ...


Nothing wrong with an armpit if it's cleaned every week or two.

From the Wiltshire Times (https://www.wiltshiretimes.co.uk/news/17505909.town-hits-back-at-insulting-article/)

Having a USP can only be good for a town's marketing strategy - may attract sponsorship from a deodorant manufacturer...……...as for the turds, Melksham has already cornered the market in earth closets so probably best for Trowbridge to focus on the armpit? (so to speak)  :)

How about....

(https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/e456fef6-cc2d-4944-8db8-3e05ed27e090_1.0f4be49fe13a93b57234b270f81ec0c8.jpeg?odnHeight=450&odnWidth=450&odnBg=FFFFFF)

Alternatively, the perfect message for Trowbridge supporters and detractors alike to show that they either are, or are getting...

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/518m3AofoUL._AC_SY400_.jpg)

Least this all takes the heat off Swindon....