Talk:Chippenham, Wiltshire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 To Do List 2 Comments on to do list 3 Previous discussion 4 Population 5 Chippenham Folk Festival 6 Cepen Park pronunciation 7 What do users expect when they type Chippenham? 8 Westinghouse 9 Eddie Cochrane festival 10 Schools 11 Buttercross 12 Balestrades 13 Old town bridge 14 Previous businesses and associations 15 apologies 16 Major resectioning of article 17 motto and more 18 Current edits 19 Peer Review 19.1 Chippenham

[edit] To Do List

• Summary Expand. Currently:

Chippenham is a market town in Wiltshire, England, located at grid reference ST919733, some 21 km (13 miles) east of Bath and 163 km (96 miles) west of London. In the 2001 census the population of the town was recorded as 28,065.^[1] The town motto is "Unity and Loyalty".

• Situation Expand (slightly, not too much).
• Transport.NPOV. Cite Sources for Transport. Redraft fully. Currently:

The town is 7 km (4 miles) south of the M4 motorway, giving easy access to Bristol, Swindon, South Wales and London. The A4 coach road from London provides an alternative route to Bristol via Bath, and the A420 and B4069 bring you to Bristol and Oxford.

Chippenham railway station is on the main line rail route from London Paddington to the West Country and is famous for its railway arches and other buildings created by Isambard Kingdom Brunel when he built the Great Western Railway. Bus services to Bath, Calne, Devizes, Trowbridge and Swindon are available.

There is a periphery road (the A4 national route) outlining the southern half of the town. However, it is thought that a bypass linking the A4 at Pewsham and the A350 north of Cepen Park (i.e. an eastern bypass) is now necessary to avoid ever-increasing congestion and to cut 5 km (3 miles) off journeys for those travelling to the M4 motorway at junction 17 from the south and east of the town and from nearby Calne.

The town is bypassed to the west by the A350, which links the M4 motorway with Chippenham and nearby towns to the south, such as Melksham and Trowbridge. Again, this road had become increasingly congested over recent years (during rush-hours it resembles a car-park),and there have been calls to expand the road to dual-carriageway status, as there is certainly the space to do this.

National Coach services connect at Chippenham to London, Wales, the South West, the Midlands and East Anglia. Cross town minibus services plus additional local services linking neighbouring villages to the town are provided by a number of private operators.

• Demographics. Expand and cite at least a second source.
• History is well sourced and quite full. May well require splitting up into different subsections and expanding history for the last 200 years at least but for now it is a section that we can return to later.
• Landmarks. We need to add more with sources cited. Surely there are more? History of the war memorial for example.
• Politics. The initial section needs sources cited. Is there room for expansion with electoral history (perhaps just a small section with a continued in... and link to the appropriate page (eg North Wiltshire District)).
• Folk Festival. Needs NPOV rewrite. Needs sources. Needs expanding. Do we need a red link to Hospital Radio? Is there a page and this is linked wrong? Needs a style rewrite. Currently:

The Chippenham Folk Festival takes place every year, usually from the 26th to the 30th of May. Although it has seen many changes since its beginnings in Lacock all those years ago, it still retains its 'village' atmosphere, providing three and a half days packed with song, dance, workshops and dance displays. Over 200 events take place within the town centre, turning the whole town into a giant party. The main ceilidh and concert events take place in the beautiful park alongside the river, while practically every pub and venue in the town is used for a vast range of sessions, workshops and smaller concerts and dances. There is also a full program of children's events, a large craft marquee, catering facilities and an open air arena in the park. The High Street and historic Market Square are both pedestrianised, and are used throughout the weekend for busking, street theatre and processions. A huge street fair also takes place on the Monday. The event is featured on programming on the town's own Chippenham Hospital Radio.

• Eddie Cochran Festival needs expanding and citing sources.
• Museum. Do we need opening hours, management, a bit more history etc?
• Media is good but maybe we could add some details on these things offices history (small) etc.
• Sport and Leisure. Some good sourcing but not all. Some bits need NPOV and sourcing. Definitely needs some expansion. Currently:

Chippenham is well served with sports clubs and leisure facilities. The Olympiad Centre caters for a wide range of interests and has a variety of swimming pools and full gym facilities.^[2] It also plays host to many events including the popular annual CAMRA beer festival.^[3]

Chippenham Sports Club comprises cricket, bowls,^[4] tennis and hockey sections and is situated on the Bristol Road adjacent to Chippenham Town F.C..^[5] Chippenham Rugby Club is on the western outskirts next to the A350 bypass.^[6]

There is also a small cinema on the western edge of the town centre. However, Chippenham has been identified as a perfect location for a future major multiplex complex as it is central to an area covering the towns of Trowbridge, Calne, Melksham, Corsham and Malmesbury which are all devoid of cinemas, the alternative being to travel to congested Bath or further-afield Swindon.

The Severn and Thames cycle route (part of Route 4) of the Sustrans National Cycle Network passes through the town.

There is also a night-life scene, with the New Inn, The Rose and Crown and Buds 2000 being late-night venues, although many people travel to Bath, 21 km (13 miles) to the west.

• Economy. Needs expanding. Needs NPOV. Needs Sources cited. Is a redlink to Wincanton needed? Is it a misspelling?
• Tourism. Needs expanding. Needs Sources.
• Twin towns. Needs sources cited.
• Religion. Good for Christianity and it has sources. Should we also give more details on addresses and times of services? Expand to include other religions? Are there any other religions present in the town?
• Education. Do we need to expand the details on the schools? All relevant info present and sourced.
• Notable individuals. Are there any more? Sources needing cited for some.
• Expansions - See below. Eg IK Brunel, Folk Festival, Eddie Cochran festival and several other things.

I thought it best to list these here rather than just trying to work through it myself. Please put your comments (pro/con) below and strike through anything you consider complete. Feel free to add to the list or edit it (but please put comments below if you do). AlanD 21:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments on to do list

Please put your comments on the To Do list here:AlanD 21:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I've expanded the summary to include a few points that I think are relevant - review and edits encouraged! --Jon 13:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Previous discussion

Chippenham, Wiltshire has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

	This article falls within the scope of WikiProject UK geography, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to places in the UK. If you wish to contribute you can visit the project page where there are resources & guidelines, to do lists and discussions.	United Kingdom Portal
This article has been rated "start" on the Wikipedia Version 1.0 quality scale.
On the project page you can find detailed guides on how to write about counties and settlements, as well as where to find statistics, references and other useful things. Additionally, the following have been identified as specific improvements this article needs: Add a map Cite sources! (vastly improved... however a number of sources used to put the article together are actually present on the page as external links at the bottom but not cited in the article properly. It'll be a bit of a task looking through them to find what came from where. Could those who wrote the sections and added the external links possibly ref which site was used for which sections?AlanD 00:23, 10 February 2007 (UTC)) Introduction should be three paragraphs summaring the article, and should include population. (Done The Hugmonster) Location: could be renamed "Geography" for consistancy, include some geology. Early History should be a general history section. (Done The Hugmonster) "Chippenham Today"? Seems like a "misc" section of random facts. The population, district and constituency can be moved to the intro section, and possibly mentioned elsewhere as well. Cycle route can go in the geography section. The mention of the south wales border appears to be out of context and irrelevant to the article. (Done The Hugmonster) Make a "culture" section and put both the festivals and the sport in that. We don't need separate sections for every paragraph.(Done The Hugmonster)

[edit] Population

Chippenham over 40,000 and Winchester barely 35,000? Difficult. I don't think that is correct Brotadac 13-08-05

To quote www.chippenham.gov.uk: "Chippenham is one of the West Country’s most dynamic market towns with a population of over 40,000." Winchester Council's web site says 107,000. The Hugmonster 26/09/05

There's a lot of ambiguity about population - it all depends on what you think "Chippenham" is.

• At the 2001 census Chippenham CP had a pop'n of 28,065Census 2001, Chippenham CP Headcount
• If you include Chippenham Without CP and Langley Burrell Without CP, which some might, but this includes the population of a few surrounding villages, then you'd have a total of 33,832
• Chippenham Town Council estimate the population to be "over 40,000"
• Someone put a figure of 33,189 in the article, again quoting from the 2001 Census, but I can't equate this to the data available.
• I put an approximate figure of "30,000" in the infobox based on the 2001 census data

What is the "right" figure to use? --Jon 13:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chippenham Folk Festival

Added a few bits about the location and transport, also mentioned Chippenham folk festival which i feel is one of the greatest events which Chippenham hold anually. Shanemccarthy1982 04:39, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Should Chippenham Folk Festival have its own article?? DAylen 17:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cepen Park pronunciation

Can anybody provide a definitive pronunciation for 'Cepen Park' please? I used to live there and never worked out whether it was keppen or seepen - I have heard both many times! The Hugmonster 16/09/06

I've only ever heard it as 'seepen' and I lived there for fifteen years. Also I've known people who lived in Cepen Park North, and they pronounce it that way. Hope this helps. Dragonfly888 21:51, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I've lived in Chippenham for about seven years now, and the de-facto pronunciation is 'seepen', though I've come across a handful of people who wish it were pronounced 'keppen'. --Jon 13:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

'Seepen' seems to be the norm, especially talking to a friend who lives in Cepen North, although he does say that some odd people pronounce it 'Seffen' as well Foxhill 21:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

As far as I am aware it is currently (mis)pronounced seepen but the ancient pronounciation (the name coming from one of the early town names) is Kepen. AlanD 00:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What do users expect when they type Chippenham?

There are 3 Chippenhams (two places and a road) and also a Cippenham, so there is a disambiguation page at Chippenham. Since Chippenham, Wiltshire is much larger than the others, I propose that Chippenham redirect here, and the disambiguation page be moved to Chippenham (disambiguation).

Continue this move discussion at Talk:Chippenham, not below

[edit] Westinghouse

The article states "The largest employer in the town appears to be a part of Westinghouse, now a part of Invensys". The link goes to the current Westinghouse Electric in America which I don't think they are part of. There used to be several businesses on the site called Westinghouse Systems, Westinghouse Brake & Signal and Westcode Semiconductors - all of which were presumably owned by the same bunch at some point. Systems became part of Hawker Siddeley, then BTR, then Schneider Electric. Brakes & Signal split up and part of it is now owned by Invensys. 'Westinghouse' certainly was the major employer in the town around the beginning of the last century (no sources, just something I was told at school) and I believe there is some kind of a link to the American Westinghouse, but I don't really know enough to confidently update the article! Can anyone else help please? Thanks, The Hugmonster 21:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Eddie Cochrane festival

Surely the death of Eddy and his annual festival needs a section of its own too? Having consistantly missed it I'm not the right one to mention it.AlanD 00:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

There is already an article on Eddie Cochrane so anything we put here mustn't be too in-depth I guess. However, I certainly agree that an section about the festival is a good idea. The Hugmonster 21:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I've created a sub-section now so people in the know can add more to it. The Hugmonster 12:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Schools

Perhaps the 3 secondary schools need to be linked in and mentioned properly? AlanD 00:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC) :I've started a section on schools and listed the three secondary schools. Only Sheldon seems to have its own article so far. I'd have thought Abbeyfield deserves one given its initial history and the WW2 bomb! Can someone list the primary schools please as I don't know them all. The Hugmonster 22:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Um... Ivy Lane, Charter, St Mary's, Redland, King's Lodge... there are more. AlanD 21:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Buttercross

Nobody wanting to mention the bizarre history of the buttercross in Chippenham, moved, sat in a field then eventually restored?AlanD 00:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC) Added (missed out details of it sitting in a field for years corroding away (no source for it)) AlanD 00:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Can someone add this to the History section? The Hugmonster 12:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Balestrades

Parts of the old town bridge are present on the roofs of houses in Bath. AlanD 00:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Old town bridge

The old town bridge was prone to flooding. The Chippenham museum should be able to help with that... plus perhaps the museum should have an entry. AlanD 00:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The centre of town is still prone to flooding, both from the River Avon itself and the dodgy drainage down the High Street. I did a talk to some 6th formers at Sheldon a few years ago about flooding history in the town. I'll see if I can find my notes. The Hugmonster 21:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Previous businesses and associations

Chippenham was previously associated with cheese markets, cattle markets and Mattisons. The town was well known for the outdoor pool too.

Chippenham also had a huge Nestle factory on the water front.

Chippenham was also a canal town with the warf being on the site of the bus station. Some of the buildings around the Rose and Crown were used for the storage of unloaded coal. The Rose and Crown was at that time named The Warf.

Chippenham Town have had varied success as a club but need a bit more of a mention, the club could help (or the Webbs, Sandie or Doug who have long been associated with the club).

The Town Council also has an interesting history having been abolished and then reinstated (again the Council itself or the Webbs could help).

The new Stanley Park development needs a mention too.AlanD 00:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC) AlanD 00:25, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] apologies

I know I have added a few suggestions and that Wikipedia is about 'doing it for yourself' but while I know a lot about my town in general I don't know it all in depth (nor do I have references to cite). I would suggest that the Town Museum, Council, Schools, library, football club and prominent citizens would be the best folk to contact. I may do this myself but it would probably be best coming from someone who has been more heavily involved in the putting together of the page so far. Chippenham is filled with history and local historians. AlanD 00:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

AlanD, you've been doing a great job on our town's page! Don't apologise! My son is doing a project on the history of Chippenham at the moment, and I'll try and cross-reference the history here with sources in some of the (many) books he's borrowed from the library. Just keep adding what you do know :) (I may have the honour of having created this page, but it's content is the result of work by other people!) --Jon 17:41, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major resectioning of article

Having read AlanD's comments last night I have re-ordered the article. I based this on the article for Bath, Somerset since it has featured article status (it seemed a good place to start) and taken account of several comments at the top of this talk page. I have not changed the text of the article (other than the odd typo etc), all I've done is move paragraphs around.

Having done this I see the History section is rather thin. Could do with more medieval history perhaps and certainly a subsection on IK Brunel and the railway industry.

I created a subsection for Shopping, but this is just a list of shops (not very encyclopaedic) and I seriously considered removing it altogether. What do other people think? You can get lists of shops from business directories! The Hugmonster 12:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks very good! I'll do my best to join in with things but finding sources... I'll also try to remember to email the museum and council (amongst others) to see what they can add.AlanD 14:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC) AlanD 00:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] motto and more

I've added the town moto, sure it can be done better. A noncopyrighted version of the coat of arms would be good. Would it be fair use to take one from the town council website?

Thought of another few bits and bobs but all will need to be appropriatedly sourced:

Hardenhuish House's gardens were landscaped by Capability Brown, many of his trade marks are still apparent (twined trees (although the storm 15 or so years ago got rid of at least one of them) and the hillock it is built on).

The entrance to Borough parade is back where it was but for years it was on a shop front.

The town hall was a mess and hang-out for the homeless for years until its redevelopment.

The town hall moved temporarily to a custom built building in the causeway.

Spinks Works... history there.

The churches of the town, URC, Evangalist, Catholic, Various anglican, Methodist, Baptist... some have closed, some have merged... Are there any Synigogs or temples?

Hardenhuish House, its grounds, the workers homes, the church, the Clutterbucks and other families.

The war memorial, when it arrived etc

Bird's marsh.

One of the memorial's at St Nicholas' Church has an interesting history. It was built for one of the families that owned the estate. They paid for it to be built in marble but instead it was only clad in marble. First big frost and the whole cladding broke off. Guy who did it had skipped to Italy or somewhere like that.

There is (or was, not sure what the new houses up there have removed) the remains of a summer house (the steps and platform, plus various bits of marble) in the woods behind Hardenhuish.

I'm sure there is more. AlanD 21:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Current edits

What do those editing this page think of the changes I've made thusfar? A start, at least?AlanD 21:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

And even more AlanD 00:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Excellent work! I see you've found lots of references for the info. Not sure about all the suburbs though. I just removed Hardens Mead. A small housing estate, but hardly a suburb! Not too sure about Queen's Crescent either, but I can't really comment as I never lived there. I haven't worked out where Larkham is yet! The Hugmonster 23:48, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

How do we get someone to review the article and get its status altered? I wondered if it was worthy of a B class given the edits we've done recently. I've had a look around, but am not sure who to contact. The Hugmonster 00:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Ditto on that! I was thinking the same. I added Hardens Mead as until the Pewsham estate was built it formed the Eastern suburb of the town but I'm not going to fight about it, lol. Queens Crescent did the same for the other side of Chippenham until Cepen park was built. Thanks for the comments. AlanD 00:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Have added latest population from census records from Wilts County Council, also the council do have a good general page on Chippenham at [1] which may be useful. - Foxhill 14:31, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that Foxhill. Cheers for the spelling stuff Hugmonster, I must have been on something... that many spelling mistakes! (And to make it worse one of the edits you'd corrected was one I'd done specifically to sort out grammer etc issues on someone else's post, lol) Thanks for the other edits too Hugmonster. I think we're really getting there now. I just need to find some sources for some of the information above that I know about the town.AlanD 18:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Peer Review

I've placed a request for a Peer Review. I don't know if this is what we need to remove the "start" from the top but it'll move us in the right direction. AlanD 21:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

First one is in:

[edit] Chippenham

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.^[?]
• See if possible if there is a free use image that can go on the top right corner of this article.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 40 miles, use 40 miles, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 40 miles.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), when doing conversions, please use standard abbreviations: for example, miles -> mi, kilometers squared -> km², and pounds -> lb.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), please spell out source units of measurements in text; for example, the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth.^[?] Specifically, an example is 64 km.
• As per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), dates shouldn't use ^th; for example, instead of using January 30^th was a great day, use January 30 was a great day.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), headings generally do not start with articles ('the', 'a(n)'). For example, if there was a section called ==The Biography==, it should be changed to ==Biography==.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading ==Magellan's journey==, use ==Journey==.^[?]
• Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Wikipedia:Summary style.^[?]
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
• Avoid using contractions like (outside of quotations): didn't.
• As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]^[?]
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.^[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, APR _t 21:56, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Whatcha think? AlanD 22:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi AlanD, you've made a lot of good edits to this, so here's a quick once over from me.

You may find that peer review may not have been the best place to request input in the article at this time, generally peer reviews are reserved for articles with potential FA or GA ratings and you may not get many responses, Wikipedia:Requests for feedback is an area where less established articles can get a once over.

IMHO the article would still class as a start or maybe a borderline B (see the Assessment FAQ). You have added a lot of great and useful info but the prose and layout needs some work. The biggest problem is that it does tend to read like an advert for Chippenham which should be avoided as per WP:NPOV (especially in the Culture, Sport and Economy sections), writing from a neutral point of view is one of the hardest policies on Wikipedia to keep to and generally involves you rewriting and rewriting until it's written from a detached point of view like any other encyclopaedia.

The manual of style at WP:MOS is also worth looking through for tips on layout, how to write numbers and dates and other things.

With references and external links, the policy is to use what's known as a reliable source WP:RS and to use references where needed. Generally, if you read the article and see a statement such as "it is thought that a bypass linking the A4 at Pewsham and the A350 north of Cepen Park (i.e. an eastern bypass) is now necessary to avoid ever-increasing congestion" a lot of people will look at it and say "prove it", so you find a reference to back the statement up. Phrases like "it is thought" make people ask "well who thinks that?", so if a source is found saying "Chippenham Town Council said it on 20 November 2001" then it can only improve the article.

There are still a number of areas in the article that would do well to be expanded, as well as linking to other articles that already exist. I'll have a peek at this later and see what I can do to help. As to changing the assessment class, anyone can do that. Generally it's best to wait for someone from the related project's assessment team though or to leave a note on the project talk page for them to have a looksee - Foxhill 23:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Ahhh... thanks for that. Yes I've mostly concentrated on things I thought of as missing instead of looking at some of the older portions for editing... guess I need to move onto that next. AlanD 00:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice edits Foxhill. Thanks for that. I was going to scan through the article properly and add a to do list to the top of this page (expand here, get references for there, rewrite to NPOV in this section etc etc) I may well do that tonight. Thanks again Foxhill. AlanD 18:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)