CHIPPENHAM, a parliamentary and municipal borough and market-town of England, in the county of Wiltshire, 30 miles N.N.W. of Salisbury, and 94 miles from London by the Great Western Railway, in a valley on the left bank of the Avon, which is here crossed by a handsome stone bridge of 22 arches. It consists mainly of one well-built street more than half a mile in length, and has a spacious Gothic church of considerable antiquity, a townhall, a market-house, and a literary institution. Formerly the seat of an extensive broad-óloth manufacture, it is now mainly an agricultural town, with flour-mills and tanneries, and large cattle and cheese markets. The stone quarries in the neighbourhood give employment to three or four hundred workmen. The parliamentary borough, which includes the parishes of Chippenham, Hardenhuish, Langley-Burrell, and Pewsham, and had in 1871 a population of 6875, returns one member to Parliament; up till 1867 it returned two. Chippenham is several times mentioned in connection with the Danish invasion of the 9th century. In the reign of Edward I. it sent representatives to Parliament, but it did not receive its incorporation till time of Queen Mary. Dr Thomas Scott, the author of the Commentary on the Bible, and Lodovick Muggleton, the founder of the Muggletonian sect, were natives of the town.