Town in Wiltshire, England
Trowbridge
Wiltshire's county town was once nicknamed the Manchester of the West, and it gave the world a shorthand system that clerks, reporters and secretaries used for more than a century.
Key information
- County
- Wiltshire
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- Woollen cloth, Isaac Pitman's shorthand, the poet George Crabbe
- Famous people
- Isaac Pitman, Benn Pitman, George Crabbe
About Trowbridge
The town that taught the world to write fast
Isaac Pitman was born in Trowbridge on 4 January 1813 and grew up around the cloth trade that dominated the town. He trained as a teacher, and in 1837 he published his system of phonetic shorthand. It spread far beyond Wiltshire. Pitman's shorthand became a standard skill for reporters, secretaries and clerks, and generations of office workers learned to scribble in its curves and strokes. Queen Victoria knighted him in 1894. His brother Benn Pitman, also born in Trowbridge, carried the system to the United States, where he promoted it from Cincinnati.
Why they called it the Manchester of the West
Trowbridge's fortunes were stitched together from wool. Cloth-making in the West Country goes back centuries, and by the 1700s and 1800s Trowbridge was one of the great woollen towns of the region, with mills crowding along the River Biss. The cloth made here was fine West of England broadcloth, and the mills brought money, jobs and rows of workers' housing. The nickname Manchester of the West was a boast about scale, borrowed from the great cotton city of the north. The arrival of machinery caused real friction. Weavers and shearers feared for their livelihoods, and the town saw tension over new equipment as the old hand-craft trade gave way to the factory.
A poet in the rectory
George Crabbe, famous for unsparing verse about ordinary village life, became rector of Trowbridge in 1814 and stayed until his death in 1832. Earlier in his career he had been a surgeon, a chaplain and a naturalist, and he was a keen collector of plants and insects. He wrote Tales of the Hall while living in the town. He is buried at St James's Church, whose tall spire is a landmark above the centre.
A castle you can't see
Trowbridge once had a medieval castle, but almost nothing of it survives above ground. Its memory lingers in the street name Castle Place, and the town's old street pattern still hints at where it stood. The name Trowbridge is usually read as 'tree bridge', a reminder that this was once a river crossing long before it was a cloth town.
Beer, folk music and a county capital
Trowbridge is where Wiltshire's county administration sits. County Hall is here, which is why the town is described as the county town, even though Salisbury and Devizes are better known to visitors. For much of its modern history the town was also a brewing centre. Ushers of Trowbridge was a well-known name on pub signs across the region. Trowbridge's folk-music tradition includes the historic Village Pump Festival, which began at the Lamb Inn in 1974. For sport, the town's football club is Trowbridge Town, which plays non-league football and gives the town a Saturday-afternoon identity of its own.
Seeing the story today
Trowbridge Museum is housed in a former woollen mill and tells the cloth story through machinery, tools and the lives of the people who worked in the trade. It is the best place to understand why the town grew as it did. Elsewhere, the Town Hall, St James's Church and the handsome old clothiers' houses show how much money the wool trade once generated. Nearby Bradford on Avon, Westbury and Melksham share the same cloth-making past.