Malmesbury, "a city built on a hill which cannot be hid" - John Betjeman reminded us of the biblical quotation when speaking of this old town in North Wiltshire. Indeed, Malmesbury has been a city, and a royal borough and now a town. Throughout its long and august history it has been at the forefront of the national picture and in the first year of this new millennium, it is at the cutting edge of innovative thought. Many of the emergent ideas from Lucent Technologies which are being developed in the town will be staple household items in the next quarter century; James Dyson, whose factory is here, is one of this country's gurus in the field of technology.
It has ever been a place of "firsts": the first borough, according to the Guinness Book of Records; the burial ground of the first King of all England, Athelstan; the first manned flight by Elmer; the first town in Wiltshire in Domesday Book - and all that by 1086 AD!
Malmesbury today is a bustling, busy centre for a large rural district. Traditionally the villages and communities round about have regarded the borough and the town as a nucleus for information, law and administration. If the archaeological experts writing on the recent discovery of the Iron Age walls at Malmesbury are correct, the town's importance goes back into the mists of history. Their claims suggest that until the early Middle Ages this hill-top would have been a focus for a thirty-mile radius.
Fifty years ago Wednesday was market day and the town positively bulged on that day. Farmers descended on the town from all the old surrounding communities. The very names of the local villages link them to this focal centre: Norton, the northernmost community of the area; Sutton Benger (in 854 AD called simply Suttune), the most southerly holding of the Abbey lands.
This frontier town, in the early Middle Ages standing on the edge of the Kingdom of Wessex, had to be strong and its geographical features made it an obvious choice for a continuing community. To this community some centuries ago my ancestors came and became freemen (or burgesses) of the borough. The traditions of Malmesbury are many and varied and to be part of these makes one aware of "living history" - for that is what this town is - a living, breathing, growing collection of families, some well established, some of a few generations' occupation; others simply say they have been here "for ever". Communities expand and contract, have their "highs" and their "lows", just like families. In Malmesbury, at the beginning of this new era, the sense of community is as tangible as its sense of history.
Malmesbury is almost timeless: a person from the late Anglo-Saxon period would know his way about the old town for the street structure within the walls has not changed. Some who come here to settle so love the atmosphere that they do not want it to alter. But change it must if it is to survive and evolve as a community in the future, as it has in the past.
What a shock it must have been for the Saxons when, after a century of occupation, the Norman conquerors decided to build a "state of the art" Abbey Church, futuristic in design and technology! God's house was very, very many times larger than the most prosperous merchant's house. When complete, it was full of colour, awe, mystery and wonder, for here the bread became the very body of Christ. The townspeople's whole life was centred around the Church and the Abbey community - even their leisure-time (holy days) when they could feast and enjoy themselves.
The decline of the Monastery and its eventual dissolution in the mid-sixteenth century led to a half century of prosperity as the town reacted positively to the change. But ultimately the fall of the Abbey so wounded the status of the town that it has taken centuries to recover. Historically it is not until the last years of the twentieth century and the birth of the new millennium, with a doubling of its population, that the town is once more "at the cutting edge".
Malmesbury has experienced every aspect and influence of the history of England and evidence of this remains all around us. It is a unique example of two and a half thousand years of development. Future generations must decide how to quantify what has been beneficial from past experience and to use these aspects as building blocks to ensure that the Story of Malmesbury continues .................................
