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Calne () is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, southwestern England,OS Explorer Map 156, Chippenham and Bradford-on-Avon Scale: 1:25 000.Publisher: Ordnance Survey A2 edition (2007). at the northwestern extremity of the North Wessex Downs hill range, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Calne is on a small river, the River Marden, that rises away in the Wessex Downs, and is the only town on that river. It is on the A4 road national route east of Bath, east of Chippenham, west of Marlborough and southwest of Swindon. Wiltshire's county town of Trowbridge is to the southwest, with London due east as the crow flies. At the 2021 Census, Calne had 19,074 inhabitants.
In the Middle Ages the king's successor as the lord of Calne Manorialism and, as owner of the church's revenues, the treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral, each had the right to hold a market and a fair in the town, with two triangular market places or fair grounds. A modest hospital was provided on a modest endowment from 1248 until it provided no accommodation in 1546 and was sold two years later by the Crown estate.
Reflecting the large area of the king's estate, until the late 19th century Calne had Tithing at Eastmead Street, Quemerford, Whetham, Whitley, and part of Beversbrook, all now within Calne parish; and furthermore Blackland, Calstone, Stock, Stockley and Studley, all now in the surrounding parishes.
Houses of the 17th and 18th centuries have external walls of stone and timber-framing 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.
A relic of 19th century lime extraction, a kiln, exists in the grounds of St Mary's School. This solid marine deposition is chiefly one chemical, calcium carbonate, and is dug in nearby pits for its main use in cement and as fertiliser on acid ground.Lime Kiln – detailed Grade II listing
John Harris and his wife Mary Perkins had eleven children, and three of them, Thomas, George, and Charles, expanded the family business. The businesses of Charles and Thomas merged in 1888 as C. & T. Harris & Co. C&T Harris documented their work in a company magazine between 1927 and 1939, 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, and the factory was demolished over the next two years. Its site was later redeveloped as housing and the town's public library. The departed industry is celebrated by a bronze sculpture of two pigs, installed in 1979 by Calne Civic Society on Phelps Parade in the town centre.
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 industry and information technology. The Belgium 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.
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 approximately twenty pieces of public art, ranging from bronze and ceramics to murals and mixed-media structures. These pieces have been documented, mapped and made available as a Public Art Trail for residents and tourists alike.
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 Elizabeth II 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.
Calne is equidistant () 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 Airport, 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 School, Curzon Street, is an independent school for girls established in 1873.
Calne had other small schools, some based in houses, such as one in Curzon Street in which girls were trained for domestic service. Another example was a small boarding school for boys open in 1842 on the site of a former factory in Silver Street, called William Jacob's School. This was attended by Reg Birkett, the international sportsman, who played football and rugby for England in the 1870s,Census Returns of England and Wales, 1861. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO), 1861. Class: RG9; Piece: 1286; Folio: 97; Page: 15; GSU roll: 542789. and by Charlie Absolom who played cricket for the England cricket team in a Test cricket in 1879.Venn JA (ed) (1940) Absolom in Alumni Cantabrigienses, p.4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ( Available online. Retrieved 22 December 2019.)
The nearest university is the University of Bath campus at Claverton Down in Bath, to the west. Bath Spa University lies away, between Bath and Bristol.
The closest further education institution is the Wiltshire College & University Centre site in Chippenham, away.
The town has five primary schools and one independent preparatory school.
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.
A Presbyterian chapel was built in Back Road c. 1695. The congregation became Unitarianism 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.
The Baptist church in Castle Street was built in the late 17th century, rebuilt in 1704 and again in 1817. The church continues in use. 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 Evangelicalism 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.
Earlier statistics for Calne parish are shown below. Figures from 1911 to 1961 are for the successor Metropolitan Borough which covered a slightly smaller area. In 2011 the population reached 17,274 living in 7,113 homes.
| + Population of Calne Population from 1801 until 1961 from Vision of Britain Retrieved 2 October 2013. ! Year !!1801 !! 1811 !! 1821 !! 1831 !! 1841 !! 1851 !! 1881 !! 1891 |
Local television news coverage is through BBC Points West and ITV News West Country, both Bristol-based.
At a parish level, Calne is run by Calne Town Council which has responsibility for allotments, play areas, open spaces, town events, cemeteries, tourist information and more. It elects 19 town councillors, from four wards.
Calne is within the area of Wiltshire Council, a unitary authority. It elects five of the authority's ninety-eight councillors. As of the 2021 Wiltshire Council election, Calne's councillors are:
| Calne Central | Liberal Democrat | Ian Thorn | |
| Calne Chilvester and Abberd | Liberal Democrat | Robert MacNaughton | |
| Calne North | Conservative | Tom Rounds | |
| Calne Rural | Conservative | Ashley O'Neill | |
| Calne South | Liberal Democrat | Sam Pearce-Kearney |
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 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 Manuscript expert on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, and his wife Sophie Dupré who is also a manuscript specialist, were residents in 1994.
Ellie Gould (2002–2019), a sixth form student from Calne, was stabbed to death on 3 May 2019 by Thomas Griffiths, a fellow student at her school who was also 17 at the time. Her murder led to "Ellie’s Law" which enables young offenders to be treated more like adults when convicted of serious crimes such as murder.
Blackland Lakes is a large camping site on the southern edge of Calne which is popular with anglers and tourists alike. The 'lakes' themselves are in fact large angling pools.
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.
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.
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