Corsham
Coordinates: 51 ° 26 ′ N , 2 ° 11 ′ W
Corsham is a small medieval town in the county of Wiltshire , England . It is located on the southwestern foothills of the Cotswolds , between Bath (12 km) and Chippenham (7 km).
The parish of Corsham consists of the villages of Chapel Knap, Easton, Gastard, Hartham, Leafield, The Linleys, Neston, The Ridge, Rudloe, and Thingley.
In the past, Corsham was a center of the wool industry and mining area of the so-called "Bath limestone". There are countless historical buildings in the village, such as the Corsham Court mansion . During World War II and Cold War times, the area was a Department of Defense administration and manufacturing center , with individual properties both above ground and in the old quarry tunnels.
history
The name Corsham is derived from "Cosa village", as the old word for "village" is "ha-m". The city is already mentioned in the Domesday Book as "Cosseham". The letter "R" was added later in Norman times.
When the wool trade in Wiltshire was flourishing, Corsham was one of the towns that benefited most from it. Since the economy was not only geared towards this branch of business, but also the underground quarrying of the "Bath limestone" in the south and west of the city brought income, Corsham was able to survive the decline of the wool industry unscathed.
In the old days there was a monastery in Corsham on Priory Street for a while, but it was destroyed. Today the Georgian-style building of the Heywood School is located there. Opposite the High Street is "The Grove", another typical Georgian building of the upper middle class.
Corsham inspired Charles Dickens for his novel The Pickwickier , where he borrowed the name "Pickwick" from a nearby estate, the "Pickwick Lodge Farm". At that time Pickwick was still a separate parish, while today it is a district of Corsham on the A4, the former main route between London and Bristol.
Corsham never officially received city rights, but was officially a village until 1999. Then the parish exercised its 1972 right to rename itself the city of Corsham.
particularities
Corsham's small town center is home to the Martingate Center, a retail center that was built towards the end of the last century and contains shops, offices and a branch of Wiltshire College.
The Corsham Court mansion is also in the center of town. An Elizabethan mansion was first built in 1582 on the site of an Anglo-Saxon royal castle. It has been part of the lands of Baron Methuen since 1745.The building contains an extensive collection of old masters, sumptuous rooms furnished by Robert Adam and Thomas Chippendale , and extensive parks laid out by Capability Brown and Humphry Repton . The mansion is open to the general public all year round except December. Also worth seeing are the peacocks that are kept on the site. During the English Civil War , Corsham Court belonged to the commander of the Parliamentary Army , the New Model Army . His wife founded the Hungerford Almshouses in the city center.
Corsham is also home to the entrance to the Quarry Tunnel, which can be seen from Pockeredge Drive.
Nearby country estates
Hartham Park is a place built around a Georgian mansion.
The village of Neston developed around Neston Park, a country estate built in 1790. This is where the Fuller family lives, owners of the London brewery “Fuller, Smith and Turner”, which brews the famous ale “Fuller's London Pride”.
Military facilities
Former and current military facilities are
- Basil Hill Barracks
- Copenacre Site
- Cotswold Center (Army)
- Joint services Corsham
- HMS Royal Arthur (Navy) closed
- RAF Rudloe manor
The RAF base Rudloe Manor was built during the Second World War. It is mainly an administrative facility and therefore has no runways for aircraft. Nearby are also the mostly disused emergency quarters for the government in case of war, Hawthorn, Burlington and Turnstile.
Much of the underground complex was offered for sale in 2005. In the event of a nuclear emergency, the bunker systems could have accommodated up to 4,000 people. The tunnels lead under the town of Corsham. The government-owned properties were renovated and expanded in 2006 for £ 800,000,000. The renewed communications center is the hub for all military operations in Great Britain.
National defense tasks were partially privatized and companies such as Leafield Engineering, Paradigm Services and Serco Defense were handed over.
Quarries
The Bath Stone is still mined underground on a small scale . For example, the Hartham Park quarry is operated by Hanson plc, southwest of Pickwick. Other, no longer used quarries are used by the defenses mentioned above or as wine cellars. One of these wine cellars can be found at Eastlay near Gastard. The tunnels at Monk's Park also serve as an archive for magnetic media and data.
traffic
Corsham is linked to Bradford-on-Avon by the B3109, Melksham by the B3353, and Chippenham and Bath by the A4. There are four large paid parking spaces in the village.
Bus lines from the companies Coachstyle, Faresaver and First Group plc share the local lines and the overland lines to the next larger cities.
The Great Western Main Line Railway operates the London to Bristol route through Corsham. However, the local train station was closed in the 1960s. The railway stations in the surrounding area (Melksham - 7 km and Chippenham - 7.5 km) connecting the smaller towns are operated by the First Great Western Company. The east opening of the Box Tunnel , once the world's longest rail tunnel, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Railway , is in Hudswell at the west end of the city.
Corsham train station has also gone down in music history: in 1974, " Supertramp " incorporated an announcement from Paddington train station into their ballad "Rudy" . According to her, "the 7.45pm train to Bristol stops via Reading , Swindon , Chippenham , CORSHAM and Bath ". At the time of this recording, Corsham station must have been in operation.
Culture and sport
In addition to the city festival, a jazz festival has been held in Corsham since 2004, at which the National Youth Jazz Orchestra regularly performs. However, the success has waned in recent years and now bands only appear in the Royal Oak Pub instead of the original seven venues.
The local football club is called Corsham Town FC and was founded in 1884. He rose to the Western Football League Premier Division in 2006 .
Town twinning
Corsham has been twinning with the French Jargeau since 1981 .
Personalities
- Felix Aylmer (1889–1979), theater and film actor
- Michael Tippett (1905–1998), composer, lived in Parkside on the High Street
- Nick Mason (* 1944), musician in the rock band Pink Floyd
- Camilla Parker Bowles (* 1947) and her first husband Andrew Parker Bowles - she later married Charles Mountbatten-Windsor, Prince of Wales
literature
- McCamley, Nick (2000) Secret underground cities: an account of some of Britain's subterranean defense, factory and storage sites in the Second World War , Pen and Sword Books Ltd ISBN 0-85052-733-3