Westport, Wiltshire
| Westport | |
| Wiltshire | |
|---|---|
| |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | ST928876 |
| Location: | 51°35’15"N, 2°6’18"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Malmesbury |
| Postcode: | SN16 |
| Local Government | |
Westport, also known as Westport St Mary,[1] is a Wiltshire village with no little historical fame, but which has become an almost anonymous part of Malmesbury. Westport sits to the west of Malmesbury proper, on the north bank of the River Avon, which is bridged here over to the green fields of Daniel's Well, and with the village's northern edge prescribed by the Tetbury Avon.
Westport no longer exists as a separate village and is not even named on modern maps, but it is the distinct western part of Malmesbury, west of Abbey Row. The village itself was incorporated in the Borough of Malmesbury in 1934; the rural parts of the parish were incorporated in 1896 in the parish of St Paul Malmesbury Without.[2]
Hobbes
Westport may claim to be the birthplace of all western political theory, for Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher, was born in Westport in 1588. His work, in particular Leviathan, created the fundamental bases of philosophy, and in particular 'social contract' theory - Hobbes's showed interaction among people as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a 'social contract' (without which there is a state of 'warre of all against all' and 'continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short').
Though twentieth century political theorists tried to escape the inexorable force of Hobbes's conclusions, while the brutal history of that century proved those conclusions right, his 'social contract' remains one of the major topics of political philosophy.
Hobbes's father, also named Thomas Hobbes, lived at Westport while serving as curate of Brokenborough, a village upstream to the northwest.
[[Foxley Road, Westbury, Malmesbury geograph-3520888-by-Rob-Purvis.jpg
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Malmesbury) |
- Information on Westport, Wiltshire from GENUKI
- Westport (St Mary) - A Topographical Dictionary of England, Samuel Lewis. 7th ed. 1848
- Westport – Victoria County History; Wiltshire Volume 14 pp. 229-240
References
- Einar Laurentius Ekblom, The Place-Names of Wiltshire, their origin and history (Uppsala, 1917) p. 170