Devizes, Wiltshire - County Courts - repro postcard c.1970s

Please ask if you need any other information and I will do the best I can to answer.

Image may be low res for illustrative purposes - if you need a higher definition image then please contact me and I may be able to send one. No cards have been trimmed (unless stated).

------------------------------------------------

Postage & Packing:

Postage and packing charge should be showing for your location (contact if not sure).

No additional charges for more than one postcard. You can buy as many postcards from me as you like and you will just pay the fee above once. Please wait for combined invoice. (If buying postcards with other things such as books, please contact or wait for invoice before paying).

Payment Methods:

UK - PayPal, Cheque (from UK bank) or postal order

Outside UK: PayPal ONLY (unless otherwise stated) please.   NO non-UK currency checks or money orders (sorry).

NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

----------------------------------------------

Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

*************

Devizes /d?va?z?z/ is a market town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. The town is about 10.5 miles (16.9 km) southeast of Chippenham and about 11 miles (18 km) east of Trowbridge.

Devizes serves as a centre for banks, solicitors and shops, with a large open market place where a market is held once a week. It has nearly five hundred listed buildings, a large open Green at the heart of the town,[2] some notable churches and a Town Hall. Its development has grown around the 11th century Norman castle.

Devizes Castle was built by Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury in 1080, but the town is not mentioned in the Domesday Book. Because the castle was on the boundaries of the manors of Rowde, Bishops Cannings and Potterne it became known as the castrum ad divisas (""the castle at the boundaries""), hence the name Devizes.[3] On John Speed's map of Wiltshire (1611), the town's name is recorded as The Devyses. The first castle on the site was of the motte and bailey form and was probably made of wood and earth, but this burnt down in 1113. A new castle was built in stone by Roger of Salisbury, Osmund's successor. Devizes received its first charter in 1141 permitting regular markets. The castle changed hands several times during the civil war between Stephen of Blois and Matilda in the 12th century. The castle held important prisoners, including Robert Curthose, eldest son of William the Conqueror in 1106. Robert was kept in Devizes for twenty years, before being moved to Cardiff Castle.[4]

The town has had churches since the early 11th century.[5] The town has four Church of England parish churches. The oldest is dedicated to St John the Baptist and was founded in 1130. Pevsner describes it as the second best Norman church in Wiltshire, after Malmesbury Abbey.[6] It was the church intimately associated with the early Castle and its garrison.[7] It is now a middle-of-the-road Church of England Church with a notable interior. The three others are dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, associated in its early days with the growing town of Devizes and now in a partnership with St John's, St James, part of Bishops Cannings until the end of the 19th century and now a low church, evangelical Anglican church,[8] and St Peter's, originally a broad church for the canal side of the town but now a conservative, traditionalist, Anglo-Catholic church.[9] A Roman Catholic church dedicated to Our Lady the Immaculate Conception was built in 1865[10]and has a Church primary school associated with and adjacent to it.[11]

Devizes has a record of early dissenting preachers and churches.[5] One church St. Mary's Chapel or the Congregational Church was founded on Northgate Street in 1776.[12] It had two early charismatic preachers, the Reverend Robert Sloper and then the Reverend Richard Elliot, the anti-slavery campaigner. They regularly had congregations of over 500 in the early 19th century.[13] This church has now been converted into one house and six apartments, and the congregation has united with the Methodist church to form St Andrew's United Church, on Long Street. There are two Baptist churches in the town, a Friends meeting house, and an Assemblies of God church.

During the 12th and 13th centuries the town of Devizes developed outside the castle with craftsmen and traders setting up businesses to serve the residents of the castle. The first known market in Devizes was in 1228. The original market was in the large space outside St Mary’s Church, rather than in the current Market Place, which at that time would have been within the castle’s outer bailey.[14] The chief products in the 16th and early 17th centuries were wheat, wool and yarn, with cheese, bacon and butter increasing in importance later.

In 1643, during the English Civil War, Parliamentary forces under Sir William Waller besieged Royalist forces under Sir Ralph Hopton in Devizes. However the siege was lifted by a relief force from Oxford under Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester and Waller's forces were almost totally destroyed at the Battle of Roundway Down. Devizes remained under Royalist control until 1645, when Oliver Cromwellattacked and forced the Royalists to surrender. The castle was destroyed in 1648 on the orders of Parliament, a process known as slighting, and today little remains of it.

From the 16th century Devizes became known for its textiles, initially white woollen broadcloth but later the manufacture of serge, drugget, felt and cassimere or Zephyr cloth. In the early 18th century Devizes held the largest corn market in the West Country of England and also traded hops, cattle, horses and various cloth. Before the Corn Exchange was built in 1857 the trade in wheat and barley was conducted in the open, with sacks piled around the market cross.[15] Today's cross displays the salutary tale of Ruth Pierce, accused of cheating some buyers at the market:[16]