Westport, sometimes called Westport St. Mary, was a village and civil parish 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

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...

 was born in Westport in 1588; his father, also Thomas Hobbes, lived at Westport while serving as curate of Brokenborough

Brokenborough

Brokenborough is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 173. The village is situated very close to the county boundary with Gloucestershire , and is two miles north of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, and four miles south of Tetbury in...

. Westport no longer exists as a separate village and is not named on modern maps. The built-up area was incorporated in the borough of Malmesbury

Malmesbury

Malmesbury is a market town and civil parish located in the southern Cotswolds in the county of Wiltshire, England. Historically Malmesbury was a centre for learning and home to Malmesbury Abbey...

 in 1934; the rural parts of the parish were incorporated in 1896 in the parish of St. Paul Malmesbury Without.

Further reading

• "Westport (St. Mary)" in Samuel Lewis, ed., A Topographical Dictionary of England. 7th ed. 1848
• "Westport" in Victoria County History Wiltshire vol. 14 pp. 229-240
• "Malmesbury" in Victoria County History Wiltshire vol. 14 pp. 127-168
• Einar Laurentius Ekblom, The Place-Names of Wiltshire, their origin and history (Uppsala, 1917) p. 170
• Westport St Mary historical information at GENUKI
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