Bishops Cannings is a village and civil parish in the Vale of Pewsey

Vale of Pewsey

The Vale of Pewsey or Pewsey Vale is an area of Wiltshire, England to the east of Devizes and south of Marlborough, centred on the town of Pewsey.-Geography:...

 in Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

, England. The parish includes the settlements of Coate, Horton, Bourton and Easton, as well as the village of Bishops Cannings itself.

History

The parish is now the third largest in Wiltshire, but was formerly larger. It lost a large area to the nearby town of Devizes

Devizes

Devizes is a market town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. The town is about southeast of Chippenham and about east of Trowbridge.Devizes serves as a centre for banks, solicitors and shops, with a large open market place where a market is held once a week...

, 2½ miles to the south-west,when there was a change of boundaries in 1835. Bishops Cannings had previously reached as far into Devizes as the Crammer, a large pond on the edge of the town centre. This may explain how Bishops Cannings comes to lay claim to being the place of origin of the legend of the Moonrakers

Moonrakers

Moonrakers is the colloquial name for people from Wiltshire, a county of South West England in the West Country.-Legend:This refers to a folk story set in the time when smuggling was a significant industry in rural England, with Wiltshire lying on the smugglers' secret routes between the south...

.

Historically, the parish was part of the Potterne and Cannings hundred of Wiltshire. A detailed parish history was published in 1953 by the Wiltshire Victoria County History

Wiltshire Victoria County History

The Wiltshire Victoria County History is an encyclopaedic history of the county of Wiltshire in England. It forms part of the overall Victoria County History of England founded in 1899 in honour of Queen Victoria...

.

In 2001, the Census

United Kingdom Census 2001

A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK Census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194....

 recorded a parish population

Population

A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...

 of 1,566, in 650 households.

Local government

Bishops Cannings is a civil parish with an elected parish council. It is in the area of Wiltshire Council

Wiltshire Council

Wiltshire Council is the unitary authority for most of the county of Wiltshire, in the West of England, the successor authority to Wiltshire County Council and to four districts—Kennet, North Wiltshire, Salisbury, and West Wiltshire—all of which had been created in 1973 and were...

 unitary authority

Unitary authority

A unitary authority is a type of local authority that has a single tier and is responsible for all local government functions within its area or performs additional functions which elsewhere in the relevant country are usually performed by national government or a higher level of sub-national...

, which is responsible for almost all significant local government functions.

Sources

• Wiltshire County Council Website page on Bishops Cannings, retrieved 15:10 Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)