Place:Chippenham, Wiltshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Chippenham is a historic market town in Wiltshire, England, 13 miles (21 km) east of Bath and 96 miles (154 km) west of London. In the 2011 census, the Chippenham community area's population was recorded at 45,337, and the built up area of Chippenham had a population of 35,800.

The town was established on a crossing of the River Avon and some form of settlement is believed to have existed there since before Roman times. It was a royal vill, and probably a royal hunting lodge, under Alfred the Great. The primary school, King's Lodge School, gets its name from this tradition.

The town continued to grow when the Great Western Railway arrived in 1841. It was made a municipal borough in 1835.

Parishes surrounding Chippenham were: to the north and northeast, Hardenhuish, Langley Burrell Within and Langley Burrell Without; to the east and also to the west, Chippenham Without, and to the south, Pewsham. Parts of all these parishes were merged with Chippenham (known as Chippenham Within) at different dates throught the late 19th century and in 1934 the whole of Langley Burrell Within and Hardenhuish were absorbed into the town. All of the other surrounding parishes existed until the demise of Calne and Chippenham Rural District in 1974.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Chippenham, Wiltshire.

Research Tips

• From this Ancestry page you can browse the Wiltshire parishes which have parish register transcripts online, quite often from very early dates. However, reading the early ones requires skill and patience. Transcriptions should also be in FamilySearch.
• A further collection of online source references will be found on the county page for Wiltshire.