Trowbridge – a town so bad that it led Hugh Cornwall (of Stranglers fame) to pen a song called “please don’t put me on a slow boat to Trowbridge.” Trowbridge – a town so unfortunately cruddy, it was used as the inspiration for the town of ‘Ratbridge’ in the series of children’s books, ’Here Be Monsters’. Author, Alan Snow, needed a ****-hole of a town, full rat-like people and Trowbo was the perfect fit.
It’s basis as a laughing-stock of a town is not new. There is an old classic joke about the town – ‘Why did The Roman’s call Bath, ‘Bath’? – Because it was next to a toilet called Trowbridge.’ These ‘cultural’ references have arisen by accident, but are the product of a ****, pointless town.
The town should have a feather in its cap for being the County Town of Wiltshire. Unfortunately, it is also the armpit of Wiltshire. Nowhere else in the County suffers from the woeful levels of deprivation found in parts of this distinctly grim town. It has long been the dumping ground for the problem families from across Wiltshire as well as breeding it’s own large supply of homegrown problem families.
It is well known for its County-Lines drug problem and for a small/medium sized place there is significant drug use. This goes hand-in-hand with the perishingly low educational attainment in the town. But when you’re only going to work down the chippy, in a call-centre, push trolleys at Asda, or be permanently on the dole, an education isn’t particularly important.
This situation isn’t helped by the fact the town is served by two bang-average secondary schools, that [definitely don’t] garner well below average test results [and are actually centres of excellence, as we can see this page is being hit from mail.clarendonacademy.com, gottcha! ]. There is one good secondary school in the town, but hardly anyone from the town goes there as it seems to mainly serve nearby wealthier towns and villages for spurious religious reasons.
As a result of the poor-quality education options/standards exceptional educational options, the general population is not that very smart. [We don’t want a threat email from a head teacher, bristling with hubris and bourgeois superciliousness, to publish and laugh at, do we?!?] There is a significant ‘brain-drain’ in the town, with those that do manage to move on to higher education wisely choosing not to move back. If you have aspirations in life, Trowvegas is not for you. This means, at best, the town is basically the thick, less-hopeful little cousin of Swindon.
Sadly, it is a town that long ago stopped caring about itself and is now a classic example of a humdrum, chavy, backward and inward-looking waste of land. The town comprises 5 large council estates, all with a myriad of social problems and crime. These are then interspersed with many more dull housing estates which are predominantly drab and grey.
The town centre exhibits an exciting array of cash-converters, vape shops, charity shops, 99p shops, nail bars, hairdressers, secondhand shops and takeaways – along with a liberal sprinkling of boarded-up units. It’s got two Gregg’s, including one which has its own large car park, allowing the lardy locals to gain even more rolls of fat without needing to expend much energy.
When you add to the town centre offering the myriad of supermarkets (Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Lidl, Iceland, Aldi & 4 Polish Supermarkets), it’s clear this is a very generic and moribund town.
There is no independent spirit and it is a complete cultural wasteland. It says something about a place when a new generic cinema and chain restaurants development (that could be located anywhere), is deemed to be a positive shot in the arm.
If you have the joys of arriving by train, you’ll be greeted by a huge derelict site that once housed the Bowyer’s pie factory. This edifice to neglect, provides a beautiful backdrop to the train station and gets any trip off to an uninspiring start. The site has now lain derelict, smashed-up and unused since 2007. It says a lot about a town, especially one in the South of England, that no one is keen to invest or appears interested in redeveloping a large brownfield site.
In the last 18 months there’s been five high profile stabbing – one of which result in a death and two in near deaths. Recently a Polish woman was barricaded in her house, which was then set on fire leading to her unfortunate death. Quite how a town of around 35,000 people generates so much crime is anyones guess – maybe it’s the limited gene-pool?
The towns most famous sporting “hero’s” perfectly encapsulate this dump of a town. They both sum-up; and are a product of; this pointless place….
A snooker play who is [allegedly] grossly overweight, unfeasibly ugly, speaks like a simpleton and is on a 12 year worldwide ban for match fixing.A boxer who is a chavy bruiser of a character and clearly not the sharpest of minds. He was beaten to within an inch of his life and ended up on life support for 10 days. Having been forced to take early retirement from the sport, that didn’t stop him a few months later deciding it would be a good idea to get back in the ring and try sparring – Suffice to say he ended up back in hospital and unable to walk!
Only people from Trowbridge could be this ********* and only a town of this calibre could produce such high-ranking *******.
Along with the nearby ****-hole towns of Westbury and Melksham (worthy of their own listings on this website), Trowbridge completes a Bermuda Triangle of **** towns. It is the kingpin **** of the three and the epicentre for odious chavtastic West-Countryites.
It is a **** that has never been, nor ever could be polished.
