b&b chippenham
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b&b chippenham, accommodation wiltshire, bed & breakfast, hotel guesthouse, self catering uk, guest house, b&b chippenham,
The fast growing town of Chippenham was first established in a loop of the River Avon in which the town centre still remains. From Saxon times the area was a royal forest and a king’s country house, or hunting lodge, was maintained here. Other buildings were quickly attracted to this favoured site and a community was established. The town lies in the broad valley of the Bristol Avon in the low-lying claylands of north-west Wiltshire. This was an area of small family farms with a concentration on dairy farming and cheese making. The land within the loop of the river is Oxford clay while more recent development to the north has taken place on cornbrash. It lies 13 miles north-east of Bath, 33 miles north-west of Salisbury, 10 miles north-west of Devizes, 10 miles south of Malmesbury, 7 miles north of Melksham and is 94 miles from London.
To the east and south-east the land rises to Bowden Hill, Derry Hill and Bremhill, while to the west are the fringes of the Cotswolds at Colerne, Yatton Keynell and Castle Combe. A major early road ran from London, through Hungerford, Marlborough and Chippenham to Bristol. This was part of a highly developed national road system by the mid-fourteenth century and would have been of particular importance in the cloth trade. So important was this road to commercial interests in Bristol that various burghers gave money for its repair where it ran over marshy ground outside Chippenham and was raised on a Causeway. An early act of altruism provided the town with another causeway from Wick Hill, through East Tytherington, across the River Avon at Kellaways and through Langley Burrell into Chippenham. This was provided in 1474 by Maud Heath who gave land and property in Chippenham to provide income for the building of a raised path so that people going to market could remain dry shod. Maud Heath’s Causeway remains to this day and her statue overlooks it.
By the 17th century the road from London to Bristol divided at Chippenham and ran through Bradford on its way to Bath and Wells. In the 18th century a series of turnpike roads radiated out from the town towards Hullavington, Malmesbury, Sutton Benger, Lacock and Melksham as well as the well-established roads to London, Bristol and Bath.
There is some documentation of the early history. The Villa Regea (king’s country house) of the Saxon kings is first mentioned in 853, and in 878 the Danes attacked the Saxons here. The Anglo Saxon Chronicles say, ‘The force stole in midwinter, after Twelfthnight, to Chippenham. They rode over Wessex and occupied it, and drove many of the people over the sea; the other, greater part they overcame’. It is believed that King Alfred escaped from Chippenham and made his way to Athelney in Somerset while the Danes fortified the site at Chippenham. Later that year Alfred had his great victory over the Danes at Ethandune (Edington) and pursued the remnant to Chippenham where he besieged them for 14 days before a treaty was made and they withdrew from Wessex.
This was a Saxon administrative centre by the 10th century and probably had a minster church by the 9th century as King Alfred’s daughter was married here. It had strategic significance for both Saxon kings and Viking invaders and, although comparatively low lying, was a good defensive site being surrounded on three sides by the river.