158 listed buildings, 2 of them Grade II*

The Unicorn Public HouseGrade II listedTown HallGrade II listedQuaker CottageGrade II listedGazebo in Garden of No 5 Halfway FarmhouseGrade II listedThe Grange and Orchard HallGrade II listed+1See all photos

Photos from Wikimedia Commons and Geograph, copied to our own server, each credited to its photographer with its licence; names open the building’s page or its official list entry.

Historic England lists buildings in three grades: Grade I for buildings of exceptional interest (about 2.5% of all listed buildings), Grade II* for particularly important buildings of more than special interest (about 5.8%), and Grade II for buildings of special interest (about 91.7%). Listing protects the whole building, inside and out.

Every entry on the National Heritage List for England whose point lies inside the ONS 2022 built-up-area boundary. One list entry can cover a terrace or a group of buildings. Neighbourhood dots: the population-weighted centre of each Census 2021 output area, coloured by its neighbourhood’s (LSOA’s) share of homes built before 1919 (Valuation Office Agency, March 2025).

Of the 158 entries, 68 are named by a street address; the rest are named buildings such as churches, halls and bridges.

Search the rest on Historic England’s list →

Historic England’s conservation areas layer, supplied by councils (incomplete in places, so a page fact, never graded). Hectares are the part of each area inside the built-up area.

The first 47 entries were listed in 1950. 100 came in 1985, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 2 have been added in the last 15 years.

Two measures, each ranked against every UK town of 1,000 or more, with protected heritage counting twice as much as the age of homes. Protected heritage counts each listed building by its grade (Grade I three points, II* two, II one), each scheduled monument and battlefield two, and each registered park or garden by its grade; it is ranked both per 10,000 residents and as a total, so a village with one fine church doesn’t outrank a historic city. The second measure is the share of homes built before 1919, from the Valuation Office Agency’s council tax records. History is a character grade: it describes the town and isn’t part of the overall grade.

John Rutty

Henry Moule

John Fowler

1650170017501800185019001950

HM

Henry Moule1801–1880 · English inventor (1801-1880)

John Fowler1826–1864 · Agricultural engineer (born 1826)

JR

John Rutty1697–1775 · Irish Quaker physician and naturalist

Everyone born in Melksham → Birthplaces from Wikidata; portraits from Wikimedia Commons.

Measured per resident, Melksham has more listed heritage than 79% of UK towns. In all there are 158 listed buildings, including Church of St Michael and All Angels. Church Walk alone has 15 listed buildings. A conservation area has protected part of it since 1981.

Most entries on the list, 58%, are houses, terraces and villas. Henry Moule (1801), John Fowler (1826) and John Rutty (1697) were all born here before 1900. The big year was 1985, when 100 of the 158 went on the list. Beyond that, like most towns its size, it has no Grade I building; and 12% of its homes were built before 1919, close to the 15% in the typical UK town.