A new suburb has grown up on the western side between the original
town and the railway junction nearly a mile away and the immediate
surroundings of the station, as we enter it from the south, are
reminiscent of a northern industrial town. Smoke and clangour, and
odours not often met with in Wiltshire, are very insistent. Not so
many years ago Westbury was in a backwater, if that term may be
applied to railways, but now that it is on the new main route to Devon
and Cornwall the industrial aspect of the town may increase greatly
during the next few years.
Frome, six miles away over the border in Somersetshire and on this
same new way to the west, has shaken off its ancient air of bucolic
peace and now prints books and weaves cloth and does a little in the
manufacture of art metal work. The town, nevertheless, is very
pleasant despite its strenuous endeavour to make money in a way
Mercian rather than West Saxon. Its broad market place and steep and
picturesque streets leading thereto, especially that one named
"Cheap," and the rural throng that congregates on market and fair days
is distinctly that of Wessex.
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