A new volume of the Wiltshire VCH is about to be published.
The volume tells the history of Chippenham and its surroundings. It is the 20th volume in the Wiltshire series. Two other volumes are in preparation and four more will complete the project for the county. This will cost about £1 million, for which we rely on voluntary funding. Please help us if you can. Even the smallest contribution is very welcome.
The Victoria County History (VCH) volume about Chippenham and the surrounding parishes is to be published in early July 2026. The VCH is a national project to research, write up and publish the history of every parish in England, from the earliest evidence right up to the present day. The project was started at the end of Queen Victoria’s reign (hence its name), organised county by county. Some counties completed their work quickly, others started much later. Work in Wiltshire started in the late 1940s, with the first volumes published in the 1950s. Since then, most of the county (the traditional county, the areas of both Wiltshire and Swindon Councils) has been covered.
18 volumes in the Wiltshire series have been published so far. The first few volumes were thematic (covering themes such as archaeology, or religious history). But most of the volumes have been geographically based, considering the county parish by parish. Parishes have been grouped into volumes, often focusing on a town and the surrounding parishes, though sometimes by reference to hundreds (a hundred is a way of grouping parishes which dates back to Saxon times).
The history covered is very wide ranging, introducing the reader to the landscape, communications, built environment, and population of the parish concerned, to the history of landownership, of farming, of other economic activity, of local government and religious and social matters. The published volumes take the form of big red books but they are generally available in libraries and are also made available online, free of charge.
Research has been conducted by professional historians, working to standards developed nationally under the guidance of the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London, which supervises the project. For many years the researchers were typically employed by the local authorities for the areas concerned, who, in effect, financed the project. This approach ended with cutbacks in public spending earlier this century, and local authority funding in Wiltshire ended in 2014, since when the project has depended on voluntary funding. For this purpose a charity, the Wiltshire Victoria County History Trust, was formed in 2013 (from a previously existing charity) with the objective of continuing the project, by seeking grants from national and local grant giving organisations, by organising fundraising through events and appeals.
The new Wiltshire volume, volume XX on Chippenham and surrounding parishes, will be the first produced under the new approach to financing. The last one produced with funding from Wiltshire Council, and also from the University of the West of England, was volume XVIII on Cricklade. This was published in 2011, so there has been a period of 15 years as the new approach has been established and organised the research needed for the new volume. (There is of course a gap between volumes XVIII and XX which needs to be explained: work was started on volume XIX, on Mere and its surroundings, under the old financing regime and a legacy enabled the work to be continued. Preparation of this volume is nearing completion and publication is expected late in 2027 or in 2018.)
That leaves another five volumes needed to complete the project. Work is well advanced on a volume XXI, on Alderbury and the south-east of the county. Four more volumes remain to be started. The map shows the completed volumes, those on which work is in progress and those yet to be started.
One parish typically costs around £10,000 to research and write up and each volume costs around £250,000 to produce. As there are four more volumes to be produced to complete the Wiltshire series, we need around £1 million to get us to the finish. Any help you can give us will be very welcome!
