Template:Wp-Baydon-History

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Baydon is close to the Ridgeway, a pre-Roman road. The village is on the Ermin Way Roman road which runs north-west towards Cirencester and forms part of the western boundary of the parish.^[1] (The road is called Ermin Street locally but is not to be confused with the Ermine Street between London and York.)

The earliest known reference to Baydon is in 1196. The land was part of the Bishop of Salisbury's Ramsbury estate until most of it was sold in the later 17th century. Later landowners include Sir Francis Burdett (1770–1844), a long-serving Member of Parliament who married Sophia Coutts, a daughter of the wealthy banker Thomas Coutts.^[1] Their daughter Angela inherited the Coutts fortune, and her philanthropy included rebuilding several cottages in the village between 1875 and 1890.^[1]

Bailey Hill farm, the demesne land of Ramsbury manor in the north of the parish, was sold in 1681 and passed through several owners until it was bought by Lord Craven in 1800; it remained in Craven ownership until 1947.^[1] In the south of the parish, the land of Baydon House farm also had a succession of owners from the 17th century. The Wiltshire Victoria County History traces the ownership of other smaller estates.^[1] One source states that Sir Isaac Newton had an estate at Baydon, which he gave away shortly before his death in 1727.

The population of the parish peaked at 380 around the time of the 1861 census, then fell steadily to 213 in 1921 before rising sharply from the 1960s,^[2] as it became a dormitory community for people working in Swindon.^[1]

Until the 1790s, when it became an independent ecclesiastical parish, Baydon was a tithing and chapelry of Ramsbury parish within Ramsbury hundred.

The M4 motorway which passes just north of the village was opened on 22 December 1971.