The northern river is the Ingleburn, which rises in Gloucestershire near Tetbury. It was also known as Newnton Brook and is named the Tetbury Avon on Ordnance Survey maps. Stainsbridge (a corruption of Theyn's Bridge) is a modern prefabricated concrete bridge resting on three arches of the old single track stone bridge - these can be seen from the riverside. The Railway Hotel used to be on the opposite side of the road (where the supermarket now is). The area next to the supermarket was used for livestock markets from the end of World War II until 1966.
In the Old Engine Shed (standing opposite the Ambulance Station) a small steam locomotive called,'The Malmesbury Bunk', was cleaned, coaled and watered. The Ambulance Station now stands on the site of Malmesbury Station (terminus of the branch line opened in 1877 and demolished in the 1960s). The original branch ran from the London to Bristol line at Dauntsey. Sadly nothing else remains of the old station buildings.
Artists often drew the north view of the Abbey in the late 18th and the early 19th centuries. Most notable was Turner in his early sketchbooks that are now in the British Museum. From the car park you can see above you how easily the town escarpment was fortified. A stronghold stood to the right of the Abbey on top of the ridge. This was a weak point in the defences. Abbey Row being the only level approach to the town with no water barrier. In the 12th Century Bishop Roger of Sarum built a stone castle here as part of his grand defence system. The keep was probably where the folly is now. This structure only lasted about 100 years as the monks resented rude soldiery being so close to their sacred site and it was pulled down in 1216. The stones were used for extra Abbey Buildings.
The mill-race ran through Abbey Mill until the 1960s. It was then occupied by legendary farmer 'Cracker' Clark who kept a few hens, a cow, a horse, a turkey, a donkey, a monkey on a chain and a huge blind St Bernard which roamed the lanes looking, or rather snuffling, for affection. This is probably the site of a mill listed in Domesday, and would have been the end of a lead lined conduit which brought spring water from Long Newnton, three miles away, for the Abbey in the 13th Century.
Abbey House is to the left of the Abbey on top of the ridge. William Stumpe probably built this upon the remains of the monastery building. The house was restored and extended in the 1920s by Captain Scott Mackirdy (who gave the town its first motor fire engine in 1925). The gardens are now open to the public and are well worth a visit. William Stumpe was a wealthy clothier who took over the Abbey at Dissolution in 1539 and saved it for the town. He paid £1516 15s 2d for the estate and initially is supposed to have used the main building as a factory. However he later gave it to the townspeople as a Parish Church because St Paul's Church was in a dangerous state (but the spire still survives as the bell tower).
The path continues through the kissing gate past Lux Traffic Controls (this is Head Office of the largest manufacturer and hirer of temporary traffic lights in the world). This section of the path was relaid in the 1980s with help from the Rotary Club. The area on your left is Conygre Mead. This was once a marsh incorporating the monastery's rabbit warren (the name means rabbit field), which became a Council rubbish tip in the 1960s. When it was proposed to build on the site Malmesbury River Valleys Trust was formed to buy it and turn it into a nature reserve. It is a rich botanical area with no fewer than 111 species of herbaceous plants including Burnet Saxifrage and rare Whitemeadow Cranesbill. Water Voles are being encouraged along this stretch.
Going down towards the river you will see the abutments of the old railway bridge, one of many on the branch. Across the river at the base of the escarpment you may glimpse the old Tunnel under Holloway.
The Duke of York pub has been here since the 18th Century. The present fabricated building was erected as a temporary measure when the road was widened in the 1960s! The road through the cutting to the north was probably built when the Earl of Suffolk established Charlton Park two centuries before the pub first opened.
Cross the road at St Leonard's Bridge. As you walk across Longmead note the pretty Little Stone Arched Bridge to the east. Probably part of the old road to Oxford it replaced an earlier bridge here. The railway embankment carried the line towards the tunnel. Here you will notice hardcore underfoot, one of several improvements contributed to by Malmesbury Carnival Committee.
Tom Rich's Field is named after a farmer who had a butcher's shop in the town during the 1930s. Before the railway came this was part of Longmead. It is still very boggy here so watch your step! On top of the escarpment is the best section of the town wall. Although Parliament ordered that the town's defences should be demolished in 1646 the wall survives here as it holds back the soil of the houses on the other side. Whilst repairs were being done in 2000 an archaeological dig was carried out which found evidence of a two metre high stone wall dating from the Iron Age, c500BC.
The Old Wooden Sluice Gates were saved from destruction by the intervention of Civic Trust members during flood alleviation works in 1985 when a new bridge and spillway were built. Wynyard Mill, so called because of the ancient surrounding vineyards, operated as a granary until the agricultural depression of the 1920s. Used for a short period as a sawmill it is now a private house. In front of the mill we meet again the main stream of the Ingleburn. Just out of sight downstream this joins the Sherston Avon.
Malmesbury Bowls Club is on an Island once called Little Mead. The grass is particularly rich - probably nourished by the frequent floods here. The Malmesbury born philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679) made an analogy with the game, writing "The Doctrine of Original Sin ought to be cautiously handled, lest when the Bowls wanders from the Jack, the Bias, not the hand that delivers it, be blamed."
Goosebridge, over which the town's geese were driven to graze in the meadows, is less humped than of old. It was possible to free wheel this far from 'the top of town' on a grocer's bike with three up (before the 20 mph zone was introduced)!
St John's Street has many ancient houses, notably the Almshouses and the 'Old Courthouse'. These are on the site of St John the Baptist's Hospital, note the 12th Century Arch on the end of the almshouses in the Lower High Street. The Old Courthouse, through an archway, is where the Old Corporation has met since 1616. This body originated in Saxon times when King Athelstan gave Kings Heath, south-west of the town, to the men of Malmesbury for their assistance in defeating the Danes. They controlled the Borough until 1886 when the new 'democratic' Borough Council was formed. From 1727 until 2000 to be a commoner you had to be a son or son-in-law of a commoner, married and living within one mile of the Market Cross. This has now changed to widen membership to include female descendants and single people. Before the 1832 Reform Act the Alderman and 12 Capital Burgesses (most senior of the commoners) controlled this 'rotten' borough.
In the Lower High Street look at the old iron bollards at the roadside cast by Ratcliffe's, a family firm still operating in the town in premises that contains machinery at least 100 years old. This area often used to flood and in the 1930s was the focal point of the annual Malmesbury Rat Week, when there were concerted attempts to rid sewers of vermin.
St John's Bridge is a fine stone construction standing up well to such heavy traffic as its designer can never have foreseen. Half way across is the remains of a gas lamp standard coinciding with the Borough boundary. It was disconnected as the town's Mayor saw no reason to light the Rural District Council's Half!
Cross the road to the Memorial Gates (commemorating those who fell in World War II and follow the Walkway. The land to your right is Rack Meadow, where cloths from Avon Mill were hung to dry, next to Cucking Stool Meadow, where unruly women were ducked in the river. Avon Mill (Old Silk Mill) was built in 1793 by Francis Hill to Introduce new machinery into the wool industry. Unfortunately the quality was poor. After prospering whilst making cloth for uniforms during wartime the business failed in peacetime. For 90 years after 1852 it produced silk ribbons, finally being converted into flats in 1986.
You can just see the gateway to the Little Steps which are overgrown. These were used by drivers of carts and steam engines who stopped to draw water.
In the Watermeadows you may spot the Marsh Marigold flower in spring. This was the scene for Carnival games both wet and dry in pre-war days. Through the trees all along here you will glimpse cottages on Kingswall. These small dwellings beneath the old town wall were typical local homes until the 1950s when long established families started moving to modern council houses with 'mod cons' on the outskirts. Since then all have been refurbished and often extended or knocked into one.
Over the river stands the Recreation Ground, St Aldhelm's Mead. This is supposed to have been given to the town by Queen Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, as the site for a fair held on St Aldhelm's feast day (25th May) in medieval times. Burntheath Stream rises on Malmesbury Common from which locals in a fit of mass entrepreneurial zeal in the 1840s hoped to mine coal. This is crossed by the Millennium Bridge erected in 1999 which incorporates part of an old milking parlour provided by the dairy farmer who owned this land.
Modern houses stand on the site of the Postern Mill. This is one of the few new developments near the town centre enabling some archaeological investigation. This revealed there was a kiln here in Roman and Saxon times, four centuries of use as a slaughterhouse, a corn mill, a woollen mill, in Victorian era a brewery, then an electricity generating station. In 1941, inventors of filament light strips were evacuated here. For the duration of the war they made hose clips for bomber de-icing systems. In 1984 they moved to a new factory on Tetbury Hill now occupied by Dyson Appliances.
Daniel's Well is named after an early Abbot of whom the medieval historian William of Malmesbury wrote; "That he might reduce the force of his rebellious body, he used to immerse himself up to his shoulders in a spring near the monastery. There, Caring neither for the frosty rigour of winter nor for the mists rising from the marshy ground in summer, he used to pass the night unharmed," A spring feeds from the narrow channel crossed by stone slab bridge.
