Place:Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England

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source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Trowbridge is the county town of Wiltshire, England, on the River Biss in the west of the county. It is near the border with Somerset and lies southeast of Bath, 31 miles (49 km) southwest of Swindon and 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Bristol.

Long a market town, the Kennet and Avon canal to the north of Trowbridge played an instrumental part in the town's development as it allowed coal to be transported from the Somerset Coalfield and so marked the advent of steam-powered manufacturing in woollen cloth mills. The town was the foremost producer of this mainstay of contemporary clothing and blankets in south west England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, by which time it held the nickname "The Manchester of the West".

The civil parish of Trowbridge had a population of 33,108 at the 2011 census.^[1] The parish encompasses the settlements of Longfield, Lower Studley, Upper Studley, Studley Green and Trowle Common.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Toponymy

The origin of the name Trowbridge is uncertain; one source claims derivation from treow-brycg, meaning "Tree Bridge", referring to the first bridge over the Biss, while another states the true meaning is the bridge by Trowle, the name of a hamlet and a common to the west of the town. On John Speed's map of Wiltshire (1611), the name is spelt Trubridge.

Early history

In the 10th century, written records and architectural ruins begin marking Trowbridge's existence as a village. In the 1086 Domesday Book the village of Straburg, as Trowbridge was then known, was recorded as having 24 households, well endowed with land, particularly arable ploughlands, and rendering 8 pounds sterling to its feudal lord a year.^[2] Its feudal lord was an Anglo-Saxon named Brictric, who was the largest landowner in Wiltshire.

Castle

The first mention of Trowbridge Castle was in 1139 when it was besieged. It was no longer in military use by the 14th century and by the 16th only ruins remained.^[3] The castle is thought to have been a motte-and-bailey castle, and its influence can still be seen in the town today. Fore Street follows the path of the castle ditch, and town has a Castle Street and the Castle Place Shopping Centre.

It is likely the Castle was built by Humphrey I de Bohun; his family dominated the town for over a hundred years.

The most notable member of the family was Henry de Bohun, born around 1176, who became lord of the manor when he was about 15 years of age. It was he who really began to shape the medieval town. In 1200 he obtained a market charter, arguably the earliest for a town in Wiltshire, and one of the earliest in England. His officials were to lay out burgage plots for traders, artisans, and shopkeepers. The outline of these plots can still be seen today in the footprints of some of the present shops in Fore Street.

Within Trowbridge Castle was a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon church. Henry de Bohun turned this to secular use and instead had a new church built outside the Castle; this was the first St James's Church. In the base of the tower of the present day church, below the subsequently added spire, can be seen the Romanesque architecture of the period.

In 1200 Henry de Bohun was created Earl of Hereford by King John. Like other barons, Henry was later threatened by King John and his caput of Trowbridge was taken from him. Henry then joined with the other barons to oppose John's arbitrary rule and forced him to seal Magna Carta (the Great Charter) at Runnymede; and was elected as one of the 25 enforcers of the charter. Some years after Runnymede, Henry regained control of Trowbridge.

Woollen cloth industry

Trowbridge developed as a centre for woollen cloth production from the 14th century. Thus before the start of the Tudor period, the towns of south-west Wiltshire stood out from the rest of the county with all the signs of increasing wealth and prosperity during the period of trade recovery led by exports begun under Yorkist Edward IV and, still more, during expansion under Henry VII, when England's annual woollen exports increased from some 60,000 to some 80,000 cloths of assize.

During the 17th century the production of woollen cloth became increasingly industrialised. However, mechanisation was resisted by workers in traditional trades; there were riots in 1785 and 1792, and again in the era of Luddism (1811–1816) owing to the introduction of the flying shuttle. Thomas Helliker, a shearman's apprentice, became one of the martyrs of the Industrial Revolution in 1803 when he was hanged at Fisherton Jail, Salisbury. Nevertheless, at one point in 1820, Trowbridge's scale of production was such it was described as the "Manchester of the West". It had over 20 woollen cloth producing factories, making it comparable to northern industrial towns such as Rochdale.

The woollen cloth industry declined in the late 19th century with the advent of ring-spinning, and this decline continued throughout the 20th century, although Trowbridge's West of England cloth maintained a reputation for excellent quality until the end. The last mill, Salter's Home Mill, closed in 1982 and is now the home of Boswell's Café and Trowbridge Museum and Art Gallery, integrated into the Shires Shopping Centre. The museum portrays the history of woollen cloth production in the town; the displays include a rare Spinning Jenny, one of only five remaining worldwide. There are also working looms on display. Clark's Mill is now home to offices; straddling the nearby River Biss is the "Handle House", formerly used for drying and storage of teazles used to raise the nap of cloth. This is one of very few such buildings still known to exist in the United Kingdom.

1800s to present

In its place a bedding industry developed, initially using wool cast off from the mills; the company now known as Airsprung Furniture Group was started in the town in the 1870s. Food production also developed in the town when Abraham Bowyer started his business in 1805 which eventually, as Pork Farms Bowyers, became one of the largest employers in the town until closure in April 2008 when production moved to the Shaftesbury and Nottingham factories.

The town became the county town of Wiltshire in 1889 when Wiltshire County Council was formed and sought a place which representatives from Swindon and Salisbury, among others, could reach and return home from in one day. Trowbridge fulfilled this criterion by virtue of its railway connections and thus was chosen as the county town, further reinforced by the construction of the county hall in 1939.

The brewing company Ushers of Trowbridge opened in 1824, and developed the brewery in the town. This was finally shut in 2000 following several changes of ownership and its equipment was sold to North Korea, where it forms the core of the Taedonggang brewery, just outside Pyongyang.

Food production continues in the town through companies such as frozen food processor Apetito. The largest employers are Wiltshire Council and Apetito.

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.