Keevil

Royal Air Force Station Keevil or more simply RAF Keevil is a former Royal Air Force station located between the villages of Keevil and Steeple Ashton, about 4 miles (6.4 km) east of the town of Trowbridge, in Wiltshire, England. The airfield was built on a site previously ear-marked for the purpose in the mid-1930s. With three long concrete runways, the airfield was used by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces Eighth and Ninth Air Forces. Although no longer a RAF station and now known as Keevil Airfield, it is maintained for military use and used for training purposes, predominantly by aircraft from RAF Brize Norton and Joint Helicopter Command.

Great Hinton is a small village and civil parish about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Melksham and 3.5 miles (5.6 km) north-east of Trowbridge in Wiltshire, England. The parish includes the hamlets of Bleet and Cold Harbour.

Steeple Ashton is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Trowbridge. In the north of the parish are the hamlets of Ashton Common and Bullenhill.

Whorwellsdown was a hundred of the English county of Wiltshire, lying in the west of the county to the south of the towns of Bradford on Avon and Melksham and to the north and east of Westbury. An arm of the hundred reached several miles southwards into Salisbury Plain, with a detached portion, a tithing of Tilshead, lying high on the Plain about five miles east of the southern arm of the rest of the hundred. At its western end, it reached as far as the Somerset county boundary.

Seend Cleeve is a large hamlet or sub-village immediately west of Seend in Wiltshire, England. It lies about 2.3 miles (3.7 km) southeast of the town of Melksham. A Primitive Methodist chapel with Sunday school was built in 1841 at Seend Cleeve. In 1849, the chapel was rebuilt in red brick with ashlar quoins. The chapel closed in 1979 and was converted into a private house in 2012.Seend Cleeve Quarry was a source of brown haematite; since 1987 the quarry has been a Geological Site of Special Scientific Interest. There was an ironworks in the second half of the 19th century, and quarrying continued until 1946.Seend Cleeve has two public houses: the Barge Inn on the Kennet and Avon Canal, and the Brewery Inn.

Seend Cleeve Quarry (grid reference ST933609) is a 7.5 acres (3.0 ha) Geological Site of Special Scientific Interest at Seend Cleeve, Wiltshire, England, notified in 1987. It is important for its strata from the Oxfordian stage of the Jurassic period, containing fossil ammonites and bivalves which aid stratigraphy.The site was an iron ore quarry between the middle of the 19th century and the 1960s, and in the 19th century Seend Iron Works was nearby. None of these facilities have been preserved; the site is now pasture.

Bulkington is a village and civil parish in the county of Wiltshire, England. The village is about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) west of Devizes and a similar distance southeast of Melksham. The northern boundary of the parish is the Summerham Brook, and the Semington Brook is the boundary to the west and south. Bulkington was one of the villages featured in the 2003 BBC2 television documentary A Country Parish.

Ashton Common is a hamlet in Wiltshire, England, located on Common Hill a little south of the A350 road. The hamlet belongs to the civil parish of Steeple Ashton.

Seend Locks (grid reference ST933613) are at Seend Cleeve, Wiltshire on the Kennet and Avon Canal, England. They have a combined rise/fall of 38 ft 4ins (11.68m).During the 19th century there were several wharves at Seend primarily serving the Seend Iron Works but these have been disused for many years. The five locks at Seend Cleeve are numbered 17 to 21. The Barge Inn is next to Seend Wharf bridge and between locks 18 and 19.A back pump has been installed to ensure that there is water to fill the locks, the outflow of which is on a road bridge above the top lock.

New Semington Aqueduct (grid reference ST904609) carries the Kennet and Avon Canal over the carriageway of the A350 road Trowbridge Bypass, at Semington in west Wiltshire, England. Although the construction of new canals is no longer common practice in England, new aqueducts such as this are sometimes built in relation to new roads or road widening schemes.

Seend Ironstone Quarry and Road Cutting (grid reference ST937610) is a 3 acres (1.2 ha) Geological Site of Special Scientific Interest at Seend in Wiltshire, England, notified in 1965. The site contains facies of Lower Greensand containing specimens of fauna not found elsewhere.Mining rights were leased just below the Bell Inn before 1856 where 10,000 tons of iron ore were mined. The quarried brown hematite ore was then smelted in blast furnaces from 1860 by Wlliam Sarl with three furnaces fifty feet high, and employing 300 men. Iron smelting continued intermittently until the mid 1870s, after which only quarrying was carried on. The ironworks were dismantled by 1890. The ironstone continued to be extracted and shipped for smelting elsewhere until after World War I. From around the 1920s the iron ore was calcined at the site for shipping and its iron oxide used in purification plants for town gas. The works appear to have continued functioning into the 1960s.

Bowerhill is a village near Melksham, Wiltshire, England, in the civil parish of Melksham Without. Central Bowerhill is approximately 1.75 miles (2.8 km) south of Melksham town centre. Bowerhill has a population of approximately 3,000 and was separated from the town of Melksham by a narrow rural buffer or green swathe until 2022, when most of the buffer was obliterated by housing. To the west of Bowerhill's residential area is a commercial area which developed from a former Royal Air Force training school. Melksham's only secondary school, Melksham Oak Community School, is on the north-east edge of Bowerhill.