History, Art History and Culture

The course is divided equally between classroom-based activity centred on PowerPoint presentations and outside activity consisting of guided walks around Marlborough. The walks will also cover some historic features of the College, including the Mound. Students may find it useful to bring a notebook. Handouts will, however, be provided. The walks of approximately one mile in length (including the return to College) are reasonably flat with few gradients.

Day One: The Origins of Marlborough (Prehistory to King John's Charter of 1204)

The Neolithic Mound in Marlborough College: its medieval use as the castle motte. Site of an 11^thcentury mint, imprisonment of a deposed English bishop in 1070, visit of King Henry I in 1110, attack by King Stephen in 1139, capture of the castle by Hubert Walter's army in 1194. Early history of the borough of Marlborough: the 1086 Domesday Book to King John's charter of 1204.

Day Two: The Castle and Later Medieval and Tudor Borough of Marlborough (1204 to 1603)

King John and his association with the castle: its brief occupation by a French army in 1216; the 1267 Statutes of Marlborough. The castle's decline and the expansion of the borough; resistance to King Henry VII's repressive measures; King Henry VIII and Jane Seymour from Wolfhall in Savernake Forest; Queen Elizabeth I's charter of incorporation of 1576.

Day Three: 17^thCentury Crisis: Civil War and Fire (1603 to 1690)

The impact of the Stuart King James I and the unpopularity of his son King Charles I; the growth of support for Parliament in the impending crisis; outbreak of war and the Royalist attack on the town in December 1643; the Commonwealth and Marlborough's "recruiter” Member of Parliament, Charles Fleetwood, Cromwell's son-in-law; the 1653 fire and the rebuilding of the town; the banning of thatch in the borough in 1690.

Day Four: The Good Old Coaching Days and Trouble with the Locals (1690 to 1843)

18^thcentury improvements of the Great West Road through Marlborough by turnpike trusts; large increases of horse-drawn traffic; the introduction of mail coaches in 1784; development of coaching inns; bypassing of the town by the Kennet and Avon canal in 1810; post-war distress, suppression of the 1830 Swing Riots; local support for parliamentary reform, the burning in effigy of Marlborough's Members of Parliament, who were opposed to reform, by an angry crowd in April 1831. The opening of the Great Western Railway through Swindon in 1841 and its catastrophic effects on the coaching trade. A school, "for the sons of clergy and others”, opens at the former Castle Inn.

Day Five: Marlborough College and the Quest for the Picturesque (1843 to the present)

The early years of the Marlborough School for the Sons of Clergy and Others (renamed Marlborough College in 1845); the college's early success as a modern educational experiment; difficulties and the 1851 "rebellion”; recovery and transformation under Cotton and Bradley; connections between the College and the Town; Victorian Marlborough; the 20^thcentury and the "quest for the picturesque”. The development of Marlborough into the picture postcard card it is today.

Nick Baxter

MA

About Nick

Nick Baxter is a retired school teacher. He serves on the committee of the Marlborough History Society. He regularly presents local history talks and gives guided walking tours to special interest groups. Nick has a master's degree in Public History from the University of Warwick. He is the co-author of "Marlborough at War with the King - Two Weeks that shook the Town”, a work of historical fiction published in 2019 based on the Royalist attack on Marlborough in 1642.

"Discovering Marlborough's History” ran for the first time in 2022. Of 13 reviews, it was rated excellent by 9 students and good by the remaining 4.

Nick can be contacted via his website www.wiltshirehistoryman.org.uk and by email onnickbaxter.history@gmail.com and by mobile phone on 07368 421339.