A History of Wiltshire by D.A. Crowley - 9780197227794

A History of WiltshireVolume XIV: Malmesbury Hundred\nAuthor(s): D.A. Crowley\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Oxford University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Early English Text Society\nISBN-13: 9780197227794, 978-0197227794\nSynopsis\nThis volume contains the history of the town of Malmesbury and twenty surrounding parishes forming Malrnesbury hundred. The town evolved in the Anglo-Saxon period round the early monastic foundation: the town's position on a promontory between the Tetbury and Sherston branches of the Bristol Avon and the abbey's surviving buildings remain the town's most noticeable features. The abbey's estate included more than 20,000 acres in the twenty parishes, besidesmore outside the hundred. At the time of the Norman Conquest the town was as developed as any in Wiltshire, but after that it declined in comparison with neighbouring market towns, and its medieval street pattern, with the extension of the urban area into the adjoining parish of Westport, has persiste.