Калн: История и География Старинного Города Уилтшира

the former parliamentary borough

Calne is on a small river, the Marden, that rises 2 mile (3 km) away in the Wessex Downs, and is the only town on that river. It is on the A4 road national route 19 mile (31 km) east of Bath, 6 mile (10 km) east of Chippenham, 13 mile (21 km) west of Marlborough and 16 mile (26 km) southwest of Swindon. Wiltshire's county town of Trowbridge is 15 mile (24 km) to the southwest, with London 82 mile (132 km) due east as the crow flies. At the 2021 Census, Calne had 19,074 inhabitants.

In 978, Anglo Saxon Calne was the site of a large two storey building with a hall on the first floor. It was here that St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury met the Witenagemot to justify his controversial organisation of the national church, which involved the secular priests being replaced by Benedictine monks and the influence of landowners over churches on their lands being taken away. According to an account written about 1000, at one point in this meeting Dunstan called upon God to support his cause, at which point the floor collapsed killing most of his opponents, whilst Dunstan and his supporters were in the part that remained standing. This was claimed as a miracle by Dunstan's supporters.

In 1086 Calne may already have been, as it was later, a market town on the main Bristol London road, with 114 households and a church. 74 or more households were held almost outright by burghal tenure (as citizens of a borough), and the lordship of its large outlying land was divided between the king (of whom 45 burgesses were tenants) and the church.

Calne had a significant woollen broadcloth industry in the 18th century, and evidence of this can be seen set around the triangular green by the parish church, where 24 listed buildings remain, five at Grade II* including the Tounson almshouses for the neediest poor and Georgian era clothiers' houses. Nearby are some of the 14 original mills along the Marden. St Mary's church was extended by the generous donations of rich clothiers and wool merchants in the 15th century. Houses of the 17th and 18th centuries have external walls of stone and timber framed walls inside. Most of the stone is limestone rubble, laid with ashlar dressings in houses of higher quality; the walls of many houses were rendered smooth. Until the 19th century, quarries beside the London road northwest and southeast of the town were sources of stone for building.

The Wilts & Berks Canal linked the Kennet and Avon Canal at Semington, near Melksham, to the River Thames at Abingdon. Much of the traffic on the canal was coal from the Somerset Coalfield. As the canal passed through open country near Stanley, east of Chippenham, a short branch led through three locks to a wharf in Calne. The canal was completed in 1810 and abandoned in 1914.

Calne railway station opened in 1863, the terminus of its own branch line of the Great Western Railway running east from Chippenham, with one intermediate stop: Stanley Bridge Halt. The opening of Black Dog Halt in the early 20th century provided insufficient demand to slow a progressive decline. The branch closed as a result of the Beeching Axe in September 1965, having made the biggest loss per mile of any line in the country.

Subsequently, Calne's main industry other than being a small market town was the imposing C&T Harris pork processing factory. It is said that the pork curing industry developed because pigs reared in Ireland were landed at Bristol and then herded across England on drovers' roads to Smithfield, London. One resting place for the pigs was at Black Dog Hill, just west of the town, and the Harris family of butchers took the pigs that would not survive the onward journey.

The Harris business began in the second half of the 18th century, when widow Sarah Harris and her son John relocated from Devizes and began trading as pork butchers in Church Street (Butchers Row). Brothers John and Henry Harris, sons of John Harris, continued separately in business, at High Street and the original Church Street location respectively. John Harris and his wife Mary Perkins had eleven children, with three, Thomas, George, and Charles continuing to expand the family business. The businesses of Charles and Thomas merged in 1888 as C. & T. Harris & Co. each issue containing an article by their managing director, Sir John Bodinnar. C&T Harris built a five storey factory in the centre of the town in the 1930s, which at its height employed 2,000 people to process 5,000 pigs each week into bacon, pies, sausages and cooked meats. The business declined in the 1970s, due in part to competition from Danish bacon. The company (by now Farmers Meat Company Ltd) closed in 1982, Its site was later redeveloped as housing and the town's public library.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Calne saw rapid expansion compared to most other towns in the South West region, with a population which the district council projected to peak at around 19,000 by 2015 but which has since been surpassed. The Lansdowne Park housing development (completed in early 2007) has substantially increased the size of the town, creating a new northwestern suburb, including a new primary school, a medical centre and a small shopping area. This area has attracted professional workers from traditionally more expensive areas such as Bath, Bristol, Marlborough and as far afield as the 'silicon valley' towns of central Berkshire. The development's name reflects its proximity to the seat of the Marquess of Lansdowne, whose family have owned the nearby Bowood House country estate since 1784. The Porte Marsh Industrial Estate on the north side of the town provides the bulk of the town's internal employment, and is home to around 100 companies in predominantly light industries and information technology. The Belgian company Deceuninck has invested considerably in this area and operates two large facilities for production and distribution. Another significant employer is the Exception Group, an electronics manufacturer which, as of 2013, was the town's largest employer with some 220 employees. In 2006, plans to build a cement production plant on the Porte Marsh site were vigorously opposed by local residents and planning permission was refused by the council. Aside from the completion of Lansdowne Park, smaller pockets of new housing were built. In May 2009, the 94 acre Beversbrook Sports Facility was opened. This facility is managed by Calne Town Council was built with £1.2 million funding from Hills Property, provided as part of the planning agreement for their King Edward Close development. The facility boasts fourteen age appropriate football pitches, one ten wicket cricket square, an artificial cricket wicket, archery range, floodlit tennis courts and indoor facilities, including a badminton court.

Calne has Sainsbury's, Tesco and Iceland supermarkets, and an intermediate sized Tesco store on the northern edge of the town and an intermediate sized Asda Express on the southern edge. As part of the New Heart of Calne initiative, a section of the Phelps Parade was redeveloped in 2009, using part Cotswold stone and part red brick, a new glass roof section and roof lining.

Tourism is described in nearby places of interest below, with details of the surrounding historic and landscape attractions. Within the town the annual Calne Music & Arts Festival was established in 1975. In 2014 the town entered the South West in Bloom area of the Britain in Bloom competition and won a Gold Award for the first time. The award is judged on both the town council's floral displays and those of the community projects whose groups have entered in the 'It's Your Neighbourhood' category of the awards. Calne is home to approximetely twenty pieces of public art ranging from bronze and ceramics to murals and mixed media structures. These pieces have been documented in detail, mapped and made available as a Public Art Trail for residents and tourists alike.

Notable buildings in the town include St Mary's Church, Calne's only Grade I listed structure, an array of houses on The Green and Calne Town Hall. An inn in the centre of the town – now the Lansdowne Strand Hotel – is a Grade II* listed building, dating in part from the 17th century and re fronted in the 18th. Of particular note is Calne Library which has won awards for its innovative design and was opened by the Queen in 2001. Since the demolition of the Harris pork factory and the completion of the first phase of redevelopment/regeneration in 2001, Calne has seen Cotswold stone, similar to local limestone, being used together with smart red brickwork, formerly reserved for fine historical buildings.

The town centre suffers traffic congestion, with the A4 through the town close to gridlock during rush hour, due to single file traffic between Curzon Street and Wood Street, with eastbound traffic having priority. A northern bypass road (a re routing of the A3102) was completed in 2000. Calne is equidistant (12 mile (19 km)) from the M4 motorway at Junction 16 (Wootton Bassett/Swindon West) to the northeast of Calne, and the westbound M4 junction 17 just north of Chippenham to the northwest. The nearest main passenger airport is Bristol, 38 mile (61 km) to the southwest. The nearest railway stations are Chippenham, Melksham and Pewsey. Bus operators Stagecoach West, Faresaver and Swindon's Buses provide services to towns and cities such as Chippenham, Devizes, Marlborough, Swindon and Bath.

St Mary's church has a central position in the town and dates from the 12th century. The building was greatly expanded in the 14th and 15th centuries, and its tower rebuilt in the 17th. It is a Grade I listed building. Holy Trinity church at Quemerford, on the London Road southwest of the town, was built in 1852–3. Its churchyard became the parish graveyard, as St Mary's was full.

St Edmund's Catholic Church, Oxford Road, was built in 1962. The font has tiles from Stanley Abbey (which was visited by Saint Edmund Rich) and the church received stained glass from the demolished St Joseph's Church at RAF Lyneham.

Calne has a long history of Nonconformism. A Presbyterian chapel was built in Back Road c. 1695. The congregation became Unitarian after 1770, being influenced by Joseph Priestley who lived in the town from 1773 to 1780 and preached at the chapel. The chapel had been closed by the late 1830s and was re used by the Primitive Methodists and later by the Salvation Army. It was demolished in the 1960s. Particular Baptists built Zion chapel in 1836 on the street now called The Pippin; this too remains open, and is a feature of Calne's pedestrian precinct. Wesleyan Methodists built a chapel in Back Road in 1811, and opened a larger church at Silver Street in 1867, which continues in use. Primitive Methodists used the former Unitarian chapel from the late 1830s, and moved to the former Wesleyan chapel in Back Road in 1887. In 1965 both congregations came together in the Silver Street building and the chapel in Back Road was later demolished. The Free Church in Church Street was built in 1868 by a group who broke away from the parish church. The congregation is affiliated to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. There is an Evangelical church in Oxford Road. First built in the early 1930s, and rebuilt at a later date, this was an Open Brethren Gospel Hall until at least the late 1990s. There is a non conformist cemetery alongside the Curzon Street section of the A4 leading towards Chippenham. The cemetery was opened in 1867 and is available to people of any faith.

In local radio, BBC Radio Wiltshire and Heart West are supplemented by two Internet only stations: Eartunes Radio (Calne's long established community station), and White Horse Radio (music, advertiser supported). Local television news coverage is through BBC Points West and ITV News West Country, both Bristol based.

Calne is in the North Wiltshire parliamentary constituency, held by Conservative James Gray since the 2010 General Election. It is the constituency's largest town and lies at its southern edge. The town was previously in the Devizes constituency, with former Conservative Party Chairman and Northern Ireland Minister Michael Ancram serving as the local Member of Parliament until May 2010. Civic and local governance is through Calne Town Council and Wiltshire Council, which is a unitary authority. The town council spends approximately half of its income on parks, open spaces and the Beversbrook sports facility, and in 2013 levied an annual precept of £1.1M from households and businesses, with reserves of almost £1M.

The first inhabitant of note was Edmund Rich (1175–1240), who became Archbishop of Canterbury. He was canonised and many educational establishments are named after him, notably St Edmund Hall, Oxford and St Edmund's College, Cambridge. John Pym (1584–1643) lived in Calne. He was a leader of the Long Parliament and a prominent critic of Kings James I and then Charles I. He was one of the Five Members whose attempted arrest in 1642 sparked the Civil War. Isaac Nichols, a transported convict who became the first postmaster of Sydney, New South Wales was born here in 1770. The country estate of Bowood House, which dates from 1725, lies approximately 3 mile (5 km) southwest of the town. It is the family seat of the Marquess of Lansdowne; the current Marquess is Charles Petty Fitzmaurice. It was at Bowood that Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen in 1774; there is a plaque in the town centre commemorating this. Jan Ingenhousz repeated Joseph Priestley's experiments and found it was sunlight which acted upon the plants to create oxygen (photosynthesis). There is a pavement display outside the Millennium Library in Calne in his honour. Samuel Taylor Coleridge stayed from 1814 to 1816 as part of the Morgan household whilst writing his Biographia Literaria. A plaque on the house commemorates this visit. Walter Goodall George (1858–1943) was an athlete who set numerous world records as an amateur and then as a professional. In one of his races, he set a mile record which was not surpassed for almost 30 years. George held more than 13 world records for running at the time and still holds a world record simply for holding the mile record longer than anyone else. There are two plaques in Calne to commemorate his life, one in front of the town hall and one at ground level just inside the recreation grounds. Frederic Hicks Beaven (11 April 1855 – 22 January 1941) was Bishop of Mashonaland from 1911 – 1915 when his title was changed to Bishop of Southern Rhodesia, until his retirement in 1925. Sarah Grand (1854–1943), a feminist activist and writer, settled in Calne in 1942 after her house in London was damaged by a German bomb. She died a year later on 12 May 1943, at age 88. She coined the phrase 'The New Woman' and advocated new rights for women, notably in marriage. The composer Sir Michael Tippett lived in an isolated house on Derry Hill above Calne. The singer songwriter author Julian Cope resided in nearby Yatesbury until 2006, and lived in Calne itself for some years before he moved with his family to the village. The actor David Hemmings lived in the Old Mill in Calne for many years until his death in December 2003. Clive Farahar, the books and manuscripts expert on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, and his wife Sophie Dupré who is also a manuscript specialist, were residents in 1994.

Founded in 1886, Calne Town F. C. play in the Western Football League First Division at the tenth highest tier of the English league system. Their Bremhill View ground is located on the north side of the town close to the A3102 bypass.

According to their website, the rugby club was formed in the late 1920s, in part due to the influx of Welsh to the area during the depression. The Junior Imperial League, forerunners of the Young Conservatives formed the club under the presidency of either Mr Drewett or Mr L. Taylor. The team's first match was probably in Drewett ’s field where now stands Braemor Road. Their inaugural game against a Bath XV team was played on the Recreation Ground to which Calne returned in the late 1970s as a permanent home, which despite ground disputes and uncertainty – remains their home to date. It appears that a lack of local interest forced the club to fold in the late 1930s. In 1960 the club was re formed as Old Bentlians; though it was not exclusively an "old boys" club it did use the pitches at Bentley Grammar School. The club currently fields a 1st and 2nd XV, alternating home games on Saturdays, and also a junior team who play on Sundays.

Calne SMaRTT Running and Triathlon Team was formed in 2007. They organise an annual 10 km multi terrain running race called the SMaRTT Smasher, on an out and back route along the cycle path towards Chippenham.

Formed in 1992 by Mike Tawn and Dave Balkwill, Calne Running Club has members of all abilities. They also organise the Compton Bassett 5 miler and Heddington 5k races yearly.

As of 2011, due to the work of local sports enthusiast Shaun Preen, Calne is represented in the West of England Basketball Association (WEBBA), although home games are played at the Olympiad Leisure Centre, Chippenham, home of the 'Olympiad Flames' with which Calne basketball is officially affiliated. The club provides the local community the opportunity to participate in competitive basketball.

Calne's suburbs and housing developments include Quemerford, Calne Marsh, Lansdowne Park, Curzon Park, Castlefields, Lickhill, Sand Pit Estate, Sands Farm Estate and Regent Park Estate. Ordnance Survey maps published in 1959–61 show Quemerford village along the A4 east of the town, a few houses at Calne Marsh along the Swindon road on the northeastern outskirts, and Lickhill Farm standing in farmland to the northwest.