Malmesbury, an old-world market-town of Wiltshire, on a bold eminence between two head-streams of the Avon, 26 miles by rail NNE. of Bath and 17 WNW. of Swindon. It owes its name to Maidulf, an Irish missionary. Aldhelm (q.v.), his scholar, became about 673 first abbot of the famous abbey here, in which Athelstan was buried, and of which William of Malmesbury was librarian and precentor in the first half of the 12th century. To his time belong the building of a short-lived castle, and the rebuilding (also by Bishop Roger of Salisbury) of the abbey church, which, Transition Norman in style, and cruciform in plan, with a central spire, was 350 feet long. Little more than the nave—now the parish church—remains; but this is a most interesting fragment, its finest feature the south porch. At the Dissolution (1539) the mitred Benedictine abbey became a cloth-factory. A beautiful market-cross (temp. Henry VII.) is noteworthy. Hobbes was a native. Malmesbury returned two members till 1832, and then one till 1885. Pop. of borough (incorporated 1886), 2964.
See works by Moffatt (1805), Sir T. Phillipps (1831), J. E. Jackson (1863), W. de Gray Birch (1874), and the Registrum Malmesburiense, edited by Brewer and Martin (2 vols. 1879–81).