About the Trust and our Town

The Trust came out of a successful campaign in 1967 to stop the Local Council building a wall around the Crammer, Devizes’ famous pond, rumoured to be the origin of the “Moonrakers” story.

Since then the Trust has been involved in ensuring that the heritage, which is at the very core of our fine market town, is not destroyed by careless and thoughtless development.  You can view our Constitution here.

We have enjoyed a number of very significant successes over the years. We saved St John’s Alley, a fine terrace of Tudor buildings, from being demolished and ensured it was fully restored.  We got a by-pass moved to save Great Porch House and we saved Shanes Castle from being replaced by a roundabout!

These days,with constantly increasing pressure to build more homes, the Trust is more active than ever in ensuring that this is not achieved at the cost of destroying our historic buildings and the very ambience that attracts people to live in Devizes.

But it is not only those wishing to build new homes that threaten our heritage: businesses can be cavalier about the premises they occupy, desiring only to make them more convenient or efficient to their business, rather than act as guardians of buildings, many of which are medieval in origin.

On the other hand, Devizes needs a thriving commercial sector and therefore a balance has to be struck between the reasonable demands of a modern business and the ancient buildings entrusted to our generation.