Exient of the Parish of Trowbridge. 



209 



progress of the wool trade, of which for so many years Trowbridge 

 has been an important centre. Let us hope that some townsman, 

 with special qualifications for the task, may be induced to take up 

 the story where we leave it, and so to complete the narrative. 



The parish of Teowbridge forms part of the hundred of Melksham. 

 On the south side it adjoins the hundred of Wherwelsdown, and on 

 the west that of Bradford-on-Avon. It consists of a strip of land 

 some t/i,ree miles long, and on an average one mile broad, and con- 

 tains in all 2443 acres. It is divided into several tithings : — on the 

 north is that of Staverton containing 679 acres — on the west is 

 that of little Trowle, with 232 acres — on the south that of Studley, 

 with 1027 acres — and there is also the Town Liberty consisting of 

 some 505 acres. The town itself is situated, as nearly as may be, 

 in the centre of the whole parish. The entire population amounted 

 at the last census, in 1871, to about 11,000. As you look at the 

 map, the first thing which strikes you is the comparatively small 

 acreage for so large a population. The neighbouring parish, that 

 of Bradford-on-Avon, has nearly five times the extent of acreage, 

 and yet had in 1871 but little more than 8000 inhabitants — some 

 20 per cent, less than Trowbridge. No doubt it is owing to the 

 extent and prosperity of its manufactures, and especially to the 

 factory system, the tendency of which is to congregate large masses 

 in towns, that this increase of population has taken place. The 

 population has in fact doubled itself during the last century, and 

 it is now the largest town in Wiltshire. 



For those who have all their lives been accustomed to regard the 

 town as a large hive of active industry, and to whom no sound is 

 more familiar than the busy hum of numerous artizans swarming 

 periodically to and from their respective scenes of labour, it is by no 

 means easy to realize the time when the whole parish was compara- 

 tively speaking a solitude, its inhabitants being numbered by tens, 

 rather than as now by thousands. And yet, even within what we 

 may almost call modern times — that is to say some two centuries 

 ago — much that is now covered with buildings, or in a state of culti- 

 vation, was either wood, or waste and common land. 



The names of places still remaining are suggestive of a very 



