Town in Wiltshire, England

Chippenham

Alfred the Great hid in the marshes after the Danes seized Chippenham in 878. Today it's a Wiltshire market town with a folk festival, a Brunel station and a very long footpath.

Key information

County: Wiltshire
Nation: England
Population: About 36,000 (2021 Census)
Known for: Alfred the Great's 878 crisis, Maud Heath's Causeway, Brunel's railway, railway signalling
Famous people: Alfred the Great (historical link), Maud Heath, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (railway link)
Football clubs: Chippenham Town (the Bluebirds)

About Chippenham

The town that nearly ended Alfred the Great

In January 878, in the days just after Twelfth Night, a Viking army under Guthrum swooped on Chippenham, then a royal estate where the West Saxon king Alfred is thought to have been spending the festive season. The attack was a shock, and it very nearly finished Wessex. Alfred fled into the Somerset marshes and bided his time at Athelney. That spring he gathered his forces and beat Guthrum at Edington, not far from Chippenham. The Danish leader was baptised soon after. So one of the most famous comebacks in English history begins with a surprise raid on a small Wiltshire town.

The market woman who built a road

Maud Heath is Chippenham's best-loved local legend. Tradition has her as a medieval market trader who walked into town with her eggs and butter, wading through the floods of the Avon valley. She left money, and land, so that others wouldn't have to. The result was Maud Heath's Causeway, a raised path of about four and a half miles running from Wick Hill to Chippenham Clift, carried on stone arches across the low ground. It is still there. On Wick Hill, a statue of Maud keeps watch over the route, and walkers still follow her path into town. Not many people can claim a footpath as their memorial.

Brunel came, and the signals followed

Chippenham's modern story starts with the Great Western Railway. Isambard Kingdom Brunel's line reached the town in 1841, and the station and its brick viaduct changed the look of the place. The railway gave local industry a route to the wider world. It also shaped the town's economy. Railway signalling became Chippenham's speciality, with Saxby and Farmer moving here in 1903 and the works later becoming part of the Westinghouse Brake and Signal Company. For much of the twentieth century, if a train anywhere was told to stop or go, there was a fair chance the kit came from this Wiltshire town.

A walk around the old centre

The best surviving piece of medieval Chippenham is the Yelde Hall, a timber-framed building in the Market Place that has served as a town hall and a lock-up. Its name is an old word for a guildhall. Nearby, the Market Place still hums on market days, and the Buttercross is a reminder of when farm produce changed hands here. The town museum tells the story of the Avon crossing that gave Chippenham its beginning. The river is central to the place. The bridge over the Avon was, for centuries, the reason travellers came this way.

Bluebirds, folk songs and Wiltshire bacon country

On the football front, Chippenham Town, founded in 1873 and known as the Bluebirds, play at Hardenhuish Park. Local rugby and cricket clubs fill up the sporting calendar. In late May the town fills with music for the Chippenham Folk Festival, which has run since 1972. Morris sides, ceilidhs and sessions in pubs take over the town centre. The surrounding countryside is dairy and pig country, which is why the Wiltshire cure, a mild sweet ham and bacon style, belongs to this part of the county, and why a local breakfast tends to start with something good from the pig.