Chippenham – Our History is a year‑long, collaborative celebration of Chippenham’s people, places and stories. Bringing together local heritage organisations, creative practitioners and the wider community, the project explores more than 1,000 years of history through events, exhibitions, talks, walks, research, blogs and creative responses.
This page acts as the central hub for the project – a place to discover what’s happening, read new blogs and stories as they’re published, and find out how to get involved.
[Please check back regularly – this page will be updated as new events, blogs and project information are added. First published: 4th Feb 2026]
What is Chippenham – Our History?
As publication of Volume 20 of the Wiltshire Victoria County History (VCH) approaches in late 2026, Chippenham is preparing to celebrate its rich and diverse past.Chippenham – Our History is a town‑wide programme led in partnership by:
- Chippenham Museum
- Wiltshire Victoria County History Trust
- Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre
- Chippenham Library
- Community groups, artists, writers and residents
The programme will run over the year featuring exhibitions, talks, creative workshops and community‑led projects that uncover the stories of remarkable people, everyday lives and changing places across Chippenham and its surrounding villages.
Exhibitions
Two exhibitions form a key part of the programme, celebrating influential figures from Chippenham’s past.
Wiltshire & the World: John Aubrey and the Quest for Knowledge
Chippenham Museum | 12th June – 19th September 2026
The centrepiece of the programme is a major exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Aubrey (1626–1697), the pioneering antiquary, scientist and biographer born just outside Chippenham at Kington St Michael. Curated in collaboration with Kate Bennett and Louise Ryland‑Epton (VCH contributor), the exhibition explores Aubrey’s wide‑ranging scientific interests and his empirical approach of observation, collection and collaboration. Loans from the Ashmolean Museum, Bodleian Library and the Royal Society highlight Aubrey’s networks and his importance to early modern scholarship.
William Lisle Bowles Exhibition
Chippenham Library | Dates to be announced
A second exhibition at Chippenham Library will focus on William Lisle Bowles, the Bremhill clergyman and influential Romantic poet, exploring his life, work and local connections.
Talks, Stories & Creative Responses
A programme of talks will draw on the stories of ten remarkable people from the last 1,000 years of Chippenham’s history. Alongside this, community groups, CIC’s and charities including Public Art Chippenham, Rag and Bone Arts CIC, Yesterday’s Story, Chippenham Civic Society, Chippenham Allsorts and Chippenham Community Hub will create their own artistic and creative responses inspired by these stories and others.The programme also celebrates the launch of Chippenham: Our History a new book by John Chandler, written alongside the new VCH volume. The book was launched at Chippenham Museum on John Aubrey’s birthday (12th March) and includes an accessible introduction to the town’s past as well as a self‑guided town trail.
Find out more about the book and project launch event in this blog post: Celebrating Chippenham’s Past: The Official Launch of Chippenham – Our History
Creative Writing Programmes
The programme began with two creative writing initiatives inspired by John Aubrey’s Brief Lives – the vivid biographical sketches for which he is best known.Brief Lives: Young Writers Programme
From 15th January | Free workshops
Led by an experienced writer, this series is aimed at 16–18 year olds. Using portraits from Chippenham Museum’s collection – taken by local photographers in the 1900s – participants will create their own ‘brief life’ for these anonymous figures.
Writing Lives: Adult Creative Writing Workshops
From February | In collaboration with Chippenham Museum Creative Writing Group
This second programme, running until September, explores how to write with greater detail and clarity. Sessions will support participants to tell their own stories and experiment with forms including flash fiction, memoir, poetry and creative non‑fiction.
Inspiring young writers through 400 year old biographies and anonymous Victorians – a creative writing project at Chippenham Museum
Building on the successful Brief Lives: Young Writers Programme, Chippenham Museum is developing a wider community creative writing project to celebrate John Aubrey. Upcoming workshops will engage local pupils in creating modern-day Brief Lives, and the project will invite people of all ages to contribute mini-biographies celebrating individuals in the community today.
Read this blog to find out more
Blog Series
Throughout the year, Chippenham – Our History will share a series of historical blogs exploring the people, events and stories that have shaped Chippenham. These blogs will be published by project partners and guest writers and brought together here so they’re easy to discover and revisit.
The series includes ten blogs celebrating major figures from Chippenham’s past, released across the duration of the Chippenham – Our History Festival. New posts will be added regularly as the project develops.
Celia Bodenham: Prioress, Politician, Survivor
Abducted by a troublesome clergyman, she raised the gallows, bribed her way to an abbacy & survived the Dissolution in style. In Women’s History Month, meet Celia Bodenham in this blog, which is one of a series about remarkable figures from Chippenham’s history.
Read the blog: https://www.wiltshirehistory.org/news/celia-bodenham-prioress-politician-survivor
John Aubrey & the Hypothesis of the Terraqueous Globe
In John Aubrey’s Natural History he quietly suggested the earth was ancient, Noah’s flood was a myth, and Genesis was not a geology textbook. Find out what else he said and why it was suppressed for nearly two hundred years.
Read the blog: https://www.louiserylandepton.co.uk/blog/john-aubrey-amp-the-hypothesis-of-the-terraqueous-globe
John Aubrey & the Quest for knowledge
Born weak. Shipwrecked. Cursed by a witch. Almost murdered by an aristocrat. John Aubrey survived illness, accidents and financial troubles to become one of the seventeenth century’s most curious and wide-ranging thinkers. Fascinated by Wiltshire’s landscape, history and folklore, he recorded its natural world and even suggested that fossils showed the earth was far older than people believed. Four hundred years after his birth, his life and work are being celebrated with an exhibition and the first full publication of his Natural History of Wiltshire.
Read the blog: https://www.wiltshirehistory.org/news/john-aubrey-amp-the-quest-for-knowledge
John Aubrey’s Network of Knowledge
Local historian Louise Ryland-Epton explores John Aubrey’s extraordinary network of knowledge in this blog post. From the saltpetre men to the sounds or Royal Society; from the Moroccan Ambassador and his cure for gout to Mistress Hatchman and her metheglin. From sympathetic magic to indoor beehives via adder broth.
Read the blog: John Aubrey’s National History Part 6 The Anthill Network
Chippenham Our History: Not ‘The’ History, But ‘A’ History
In this blog, John Chandler reflects on writing the latest VCH Partnership publication, Chippenham Our History, which is being published on the 12th March. He considers what it means to write ‘a history’ rather than ‘the history’ of a place, and how local history can help communities appreciate and cherish the everyday streets and landmarks they tend to take for granted.
Read the blog: https://www.wiltshirehistory.org/news/chippenham-our-history-not-the-history-but-a-history
Love, Liberty and the Lust-Loving Parson
During the upheaval of the English Civil War, while conflict raged across the country, life just outside Chippenham created space for an extraordinary and rarely told same-sex relationship.
This blog uncovers the remarkable story of Thomas Webb of Langley Burrell, celebrating a major figure connected to Chippenham’s past and shedding light on personal freedom, relationships and identity in a turbulent period of history. A perfect read for LGBT History Month.
Read the blog: https://www.wiltshirehistory.org/news/love-liberty-and-the-lust-loving-parson-thomas-webb-of-langley-burrell
Chippenham’s Royal Wedding – The Birth of English Queenship
Chippenham’s first appearance in recorded history was not in a battle or a charter, but at a royal wedding. In 853, Æthelswith, daughter of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, married the King of Mercia here in an event that may mark England’s first recorded queen coronation.
This article explores Æthelswith’s story and Chippenham’s early role in the development of English queenship.
Read the blog: https://www.wiltshirehistory.org/news/chippenhams-royal-wedding-the-birth-of-english-queenship
Are Dragons Real? John Aubrey’s Quest for the Truth
Are dragons real? The question crossed John Aubrey’s mind, whose 400th anniversary we are celebrating all year as part of the Chippenham Our-History project. A founding fellow of the Royal Society, Aubrey was an exponent of astrology, curious about the supernatural but seemingly sceptical of the existence of wyverns, a two-legged dragon. So, in his Natural History of Wiltshire, he set out to find the truth.
Read the blog: https://www.louiserylandepton.co.uk/blog/john-aubreys-natural-history-part-3-dragons
John Aubrey’s Natural History of Wiltshire
Two blogs marking John Aubrey’s 400th anniversary explore his Natural History of Wiltshire book (being publishing in June), focusing on how he investigated water and minerals as sources of both knowledge and medicine. Aubrey combined local testimony and striking folk cures with hands-on testing, using wells, springs, and ores to read the landscape – and to speculate about healing. Please don’t try any of the remedies mentioned at home!
Reading Water
In his chapter on water, Aubrey records everything from chemical tests of well water and reports of healing springs to petrifying streams and deductions about hidden iron deposits. Among the most startling examples is a beggar woman’s supposed cure for breast cancer, involving a cow’s footprint, boggy water and a stick.
Read the blog: https://www.louiserylandepton.co.uk/blog/john-aubreys-natural-history-part-4-reading-water
Lead Spar and the Cure for the Stone
In his minerals chapter, Aubrey recounts a remarkable 17th-century “receipt” for urinary stones using powdered lead ore, a mysterious Frenchman and a pewterer’s improvised prescription. Before you read on: lead is highly toxic. Do not attempt any remedies discussed here. If you have urinary stones, consult a medical practitioner.
Read the blog: https://www.louiserylandepton.co.uk/blog/john-aubreys-natural-history-part-5-lead-spar-and-the-cure-for-the-stone
More blogs will be added here as the series continues, creating a growing online collection of Chippenham’s shared history.
Events: What’s On
All events connected to the project are also listed on the One Chippenham Event Calendar and categorised under Chippenham – Our History.(Note more events will be added as the programme develops.)
Creative Writing Workshops (16-18s)
Thursdays, 4.30-6.30pm | 15th January – 12th February | Chippenham Museum
Open to young people aged 16–18, these free creative writing workshops celebrate the 400th anniversary of local antiquarian John Aubrey and his Brief Lives. Led by an experienced writer, participants will use historic portraits from Chippenham Museum to create their own short biographical pieces across a range of forms, with selected work published at the end of the project.
More info
Creative Writing Workshops (Adults)
First Wednesday of the month, 7pm – 9pm | February – September
£5 per session, booking essential | Chippenham Museum
Join the Chippenham Museum Creative Writing Group for a series of linked workshops celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of local antiquarian and famous biographer, John Aubrey. The workshops will be led by Lesley Taylor, an experienced facilitator, and will draw inspiration from Aubrey’s work and the museum’s summer exhibition. Sessions will provide an opportunity to develop the skill of telling your own stories with clarity, experimenting with a range of forms including flash fiction, memoir, poetry, and creative non-fiction.
More info
Chippenham in Motion
28th March 2026 | Meet at The Angel Hotel
Rag and Bone Arts present a whodunnit play with cream tea included. Step into the story of a fictional local amateur dramatics group – the “Chippenham Players” – as they attempt to stage an ambitious 1920’s tale full of intrigue, tragedy and theatrical chaos! An outdoors promenade performance.
More info
Chris Dallimore talk: the life and times of Edward Newall Tuck
7.15-8.30pm on Thursday 14th May | Chippenham Library
Join local historian, Chris Dallimore, to discover about a notable early 20th century local character. Edward Newall Tuck was a Chippenham town councillor, twice Mayor of Chippenham (1921-22, 1931-32) and long-time headmaster of Chippenham District County School.
More info
Louise Ryland-Epton talk: Agnes Mylles and the murder by witchcraft of William Bayntun
7.15-8.30pm on Thurday 4th June | Chippenham Library
In 1564, a baby’s death in north Wiltshire triggered a witchcraft case linked to Chippenham. Three women were accused, leading to imprisonment, torture, and the first recorded execution in England for witchcraft – a tragic Tudor story of fear and family conflict.
More info
Social Media Series: “A Chippenham Woman a day”
Local historian, author, genealogist and researcher, Lucy Whitfield, has been running a #AChippenhamWomanADay series as part of the project for Women’s History Month (March). Visit her Facebook page to see the whole series.
Get Involved & Key Contacts
Chippenham – Our History celebrates the many voices, stories and connections that have shaped the town and invites everyone to be part of telling that story. See regular updates on Facebook by following the page Chippenham – Our History.
General project enquiries:
Email: mbarnett@chippenham.gov.uk
- Chippenham Town Council – Chippenham Museum: mbarnett@chippenham.gov.uk
- Wiltshire Victoria County History Trust – Louise.ryland-epton@open.ac.uk
- Wiltshire Council – Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre – Ruth.Butler@wiltshire.gov.uk
One Chippenham website related support:
- One Chippenham – Katie at hello@onechippenham.org
#ChippenhamOurHistory #Chippenham #Heritage
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