What is it about Melksham?

Regular readers of The Economist – and there are more than a few in the village – will have noted that Melksham gets more than might be expected of its share of mentions for a (delightful though) “sleepy English town”.  This week’s edition provides another example with the heading: Blot on the landscape.  It begins with this description of our local town:

“To the west of the road, a housing estate blossoms behind the hedgerows. Identikit boxes bestride gravel drives; the gardens are festooned with decking. The eastern side of this road in Wiltshire is another England: rolling fields where cattle stare down traffic. But that idyll is being encroached on, too. At one end of the road, two new estates near completion; at the other, a third welcomes its first residents. Locals bemoan a damaged environment and homeless newts. But in this competition between two Englands, it seems clear which is winning.”

The article’s point is that the tensions around Melksham (including as we know, Semington) between more houses on the one hand and proximity to countryside on the other, are a microcosm of the wider problems for public policy that the planning system has to cope with.

Other mentions of Melksham recently include features on Turkish barbers, the killing of George Floyd and remembrance day.  By contrast, there has been no mention of Trowbridge since 2013.  It makes you wonder whether one of the Economist’s (traditionally unnamed) writers lives in or around Melksham, perhaps even in the village.  However, as there seem to have been no mentions of Semington in the magazine, that must be thought unlikely.