Blog (History) - Visit Wiltshire

Wanting to make the most of the Great British summer, I decided to head off and discover the historic market town of Malmesbury and explore the beautiful Abbey House Gardens.
From the very moment I walked towards St John’s Bridge on the entrance to the town, I sensed this place had many of tales to tell. The architecture of the Avon Mills building, former cloth and silk mills built in 1793 by a clothier named Francis Hill and the surrounding Cotswold stone townhouses lining the High Street, clearly reflecting Malmesbury’s trade and industrial heritage.

Many people know of Amesbury due to its close proximity to Stonehenge. In fact, the town is only two miles from the iconic site and in addition to the World Heritage Site, there is an interesting history to be found in and around the town.

Like many parts of the UK, there are plenty of historic churches here in Wiltshire. These sometime overlooked buildings are often heritage gems in beautiful locations with their stories of the past to tell. We’ve teamed up with The Churches Conservation Trust (CCT) to give you the top 10 of their Wiltshire-based churches to visit and reasons why…

If you’ve ever joined Salisbury Cathedral for one of their Tower Tours then you will have probably seen a fair bit of ancient graffiti as you approach the base of the spire.

Cathedral guide, Steve Dunn (with his team of approximately 60 volunteers) has recently launched a three year project aimed at recording the various marks left on the building over the centuries which will soon be able to be explored on a guided tour.

Driving down a lane just outside of the interesting town of Calne, with its Heritage Quarter, it would be easy to drive past the attraction I was visiting today, thinking it is a residential bungalow. The entrance, however, belies, the treasures hidden beyond the gates, and is well worth searching out.

If you haven’t been to the small town of Wilton then you are missing out. Here are ten photos that showcase just some of the treasures you can discover on a visit here… we hope you enjoy them!

Visitors to Wiltshire may have been to Avebury Stone Circle, however how many of you have explored the wider landscape at this World Heritage Site?

I went on a trip to discover more with Laurence Davis from Oldbury Tours. Accompanying us for the half day tour were Ellie and Gillian Farago from Heritage B&B in Calne. The three of us had all visited Avebury previously and had various different levels of knowledge about the history and spirituality of the area.

When my 3 year old son (nearly 4 as he keeps on reminding me), asked if we could go an “army museum“ I knew just the place to take him. George loves creative role play and can often be found attacking and defending his castle with his toy soldiers, knights and action figures, so we planned a visit to the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Camp, home of The Royal Corps. Of Signals, a short drive from the Wiltshire border.

Wiltshire makes a great base for a day out to the World Heritage Site of Bath. Bath is just a short hop across the border into Somerset and there’s easy access by train from Salisbury, Bradford on Avon, Trowbridge, Westbury, Warminster, Chippenham and Swindon (to name just a few places!).

When you think of Westbury you probably think of the Westbury White Horse. It certainly dominates the landscape and is always a welcome sight when I’m passing through the town on the train.

However, Westbury is not just famous for its White Horse, it also has a rich Victorian heritage which is now being celebrated in a new Victorian Westbury exhibition in The Laverton.

If, like me, the start of the year has left you feeling all a bit ‘January-ish’, it helps to have something to look forward to. So here are 17 great ideas for things to see and do around Wiltshire that are sure to brighten up the first few months of 2017.

Given I grew up in Salisbury and the nature of my job here at VisitWiltshire I’ve always felt that I have known the Cathedral pretty well however one place I’d never ventured to was the Cathedral’s library.