356 listed buildings, 6 of them Grade I

Parish Church of St JamesGrade I listedMidland BankGrade I listedUnion Street AlmshousesGrade II listedAshton MillsGrade II listedThe Black Swan Public HouseGrade II listed+12See 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 356 entries, 142 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 48 entries were listed in 1950, 6 of the 6 Grade I buildings among them. 268 came in 1976, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 1 has been added in the last 15 years.

1 registered park or garden

Trowbridge General CemeteryGrade II

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.

George Keate

Samuel Cook

Isaac Pitman

Mary Mortimer

George Frederick Baskerville Mortimer

Abraham Laverton

Benjamin Pitman

Frederick Pitman (publisher)

William Haines

Solomon Andrews

James Rodway

Hobe Ferris

Jesse Whatley

170017501800185019001950

Isaac Pitman1813–1897 · British inventor (1813–1897)

Benjamin Pitman1822–1910 · United states stenographer and crafts promoter (1822–1910)

George Keate1729–1797 · English writer (1729-1797)

Frederick Pitman (publisher)1828–1886 · English publisher and writer (1828–1886)

James Rodway1848–1926 · Botanist (1848-1926)

Hobe Ferris1874–1938 · American baseball player (1874–1938)

Mary Mortimer1816–1877 · British-born American educator (1816-1877)

AL

Abraham Laverton1819–1886 · British business owner and politician (1819–1886)

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

Per resident, Trowbridge has more listed heritage than 83% of UK towns. All told, the list holds 356 listed buildings, 6 of them Grade I, including Parish Church of St James. Its Grade I buildings cluster together: 6 of them stand within 400 m of Lloyd's Bank. Only 17 of the 253 towns nearest its size have more Grade I buildings.

Fore Street alone has 30 listed buildings. Its older streets lie in 4 conservation areas, the first designated in 1975. Most entries on the list, 65%, are houses, terraces and villas. Beyond that, 14% of its homes were built before 1919, close to the 15% in the typical UK town.