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MARKET TOWNS OF WILTSHIRE (from SDUK Penny Cyclopedia)

Wootton Basset in 1843

Wootton Basset is in Kingsbridge hundred, 87 miles from the General Post-Office, London, by the Great Western Railway, which passes near the town. It is called in Domesday, Wodetone ; and was held by Milo Crispin, but afterwards passed to the Bassets of Wycombe, from whom it obtained its distinguishing epithet. The town sent two members to parliament from the time of Henry VI to the passing of the Reform Act, when it was disfranchised. It is on an elevated site, and consists chiefly of one street along the road from Cricklade to Calne, lined with houses, built chiefly of brick and thatched. The statistics of the borough and parish, in 1831, were as follows:-

Area : 4,830 acres.
Houses :
Inhabited : 400
Uninhabited : 28
Building : 0
TOTAL houses 428
Families Chiefly Employed In:-
Agriculture: 243
Trade &c.: 75
Others: 86
TOTAL families: 404
TOTAL persons: 1,896

The church is an ancient structure in the centre of the town. The market is on Tuesday, and there are six yearly fairs. The corporation is not noticed in the Municipal Corporations Reform Act. The living of Wootton Basset is a vicarage of the clear yearly value of £461, with a glebe-house, in the rural deanery of Avebury, in the archdeaconry of Wiltshire, in the diocese of Salisbury. There were in the parish, in 1833, nine day schools, with 197 scholars, namely, 38 boys and 38 girls, and 121 children of sex not stated, giving from one in nine to one in ten of the population under daily instruction ; and three Sunday-schools, with 214 scholars, namely, 100 boys and 54 girls, and 60 children of sex not stated in the return, giving about one in nine of the population under instruction on Sunday.