ALDBOURN, a parish (formerly a market-town) in the hundred of SELKLEY, county of WILTS, 6 miles (N. E.) from Maryborough, containing 1385 inhabitants. The name is compounded of the Saxon terms Aid, old, and bourne, a brook. Aldbourn anciently gave name to a royal chase, granted by Henry VIII. to Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, which, for a long period, served only as a rabbit warren, but is now enclosed and cultivated. Previously to the battle of Nowbury, in the reign of Charles I., a sharp skirmish took place here between the parliamentarian forces and the royalists. In 1760, a fire consumed seventy-two houses; and, in 1817, twenty were destroyed by a similar calamity. The town is situated in a fertile valley: a considerable manufacture of fustians was formerly carried on, but it has declined. The market and fairs have been discontinued upwards of a century. The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Wilts, and diocese of Salisbury, rated in the king's books at £26. 6. 3., and in the patronage of the Bishop of Salisbury. The church, dedicated to St. Michael, is an ancient structure, exhibiting portions in the Norman style of architecture. There is a place of worship for Wesleyaii Methodists. The southern part of the vicarage-house is supposed to be the remnant of a hunting scat which belonged to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Near a farm-house, called Pierce's Lodge, arc vestiges of an ancient British encampment; and in the neighbourhood artificial mounds of earth are frequently to be met with.