Devizes
Devizes is a market town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England.
Devizes is a market town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It developed around Devizes Castle, an 11th-century Norman castle, and received a charter in 1141. The castle was besieged during the Anarchy, a 12th-century civil war between Stephen of England and Empress Matilda, and again during the English Civil War when the Cavaliers lifted the siege at the Battle of Roundway Down and the Parliamentarian Army of the West under Sir William Waller was routed. Devizes remained under Royalist control until 1645, when Oliver Cromwell attacked and forced the Royalists to surrender. The castle was destroyed in 1648 on the orders of Parliament, and today little remains of it.
Adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Worth seeing in and around Devizes
10 places within 25 km that the world writes about, in the order of how widely: the ones a visitor has heard of first, then the ones only a local would name.
- 01Devizes Castle
Devizes Castle was a medieval fortification in the town of Devizes, Wiltshire, England, on a site now occupied by a Victorian-era castle. It is a Grade I listed building.
300 m · Grade I listed castle in Devizes, Wiltshire, England, UK · Wikipedia - 02Caen Hill Locks
Caen Hill Locks are a flight of 29 locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal, between Rowde and Devizes in Wiltshire, England. Of the 107 locks on the canal, those at Caen Hill are numbered 22 to 50, and they are near the canal highpoint at Cadley Lock.
2.1 km · Flight of locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal · Wikipedia - 03The Town Hall
Devizes Town Hall is a municipal building in St John's Street in Devizes, Wiltshire, England. The structure, which is the meeting place of Devizes Town Council, is a Grade II* listed building.
200 m · Grade II* listed building in Devizes, UK · Wikipedia - 04Brownston House
Brownston House is a Grade I listed building on New Park Street, Devizes, Wiltshire, England, dating from the beginning of the 18th century. It is a Grade I listed building.
200 m · Grade I listed house in Devizes, Wiltshire, England, UK · Wikipedia - 05Wiltshire Museum
The Wiltshire Museum, formerly known as Wiltshire Heritage Museum and Devizes Museum, is a museum, archive and library and art gallery established in 1874 in Devizes, Wiltshire, England. The museum was created and is run by the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, a registered charity founded in 1853.
400 m · Museum in Devizes, England, United Kingdom · Wikipedia - 06Greystone House
Greystone House is a Grade II* listed house in High Street, Devizes, Wiltshire, England. It was built between 1740 and 1744 with a front of Bath stone to a brick building with a hipped slate roof.
200 m · house in Devizes, Wiltshire, England, UK · Wikipedia - 07Market Cross, Devizes
The Market Cross in Devizes, Wiltshire, England sits in Market Place at the centre of the town. It was constructed in 1814 on the site of an older cross.
0 m · historic monument in Devizes, England · Wikipedia - 08St Peter's Church, Devizes
St Peter's Church is an Anglican parish church in Devizes, Wiltshire. It is a Victorian building and is on the Bath Road, on the western outskirts of the town.
700 m · church in Devizes, Wiltshire, England, UK · Wikipedia - 09Urchfont Manor
Urchfont Manor is a manor house near the village of Urchfont in Wiltshire, England, about 3+1⁄2 miles southeast of the market town of Devizes. Originally a private residence, Urchfont Manor was used to house evacuated children during the Second World War.
5.6 km · manor house in Wiltshire, England, UK · Wikipedia - 10Kennet & Avon Canal Museum
The Kennet and Avon Canal Museum is a museum in Devizes, Wiltshire, England, covering the history of the Kennet and Avon Canal. The museum is housed in a former bonded warehouse at Devizes Wharf, approximately 1 mile from the Caen Hill Flight.
300 m · museum in Wiltshire, England · Wikipedia
Ranked by the number of language editions of Wikipedia with an article on each, from Wikidata; the sentences are the openings of those articles, CC BY-SA 4.0.
What Wikivoyage says to see
- 01Wiltshire Museum
41 Long Street (South of the Market Place), hello@wiltshiremuseum.org.uk.
- 02Kennet and Avon Canal
The canal runs through the town, with the spectacular flight of 26 locks at Caen Hill.
- 03Caen Hill Locks are 29 locks
- 04Pewsey Heritage Centre
This is the former Whatley Foundry, built around 1870, which made water wheels, pumps and mill gears.
From Wikivoyage: Devizes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Not yet checked by us.
Things to do
The Devizes International Street Festival attracts thousands of visitors to the town for two weeks leading up to August Bank Holiday each year, beginning with a long-standing "confetti battle" where, at a given signal – usually cannons firing confetti hundreds of metres into the air – the public are invited into the Market Place to throw as much confetti as possible at one another.
From Wikivoyage: Devizes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Not yet checked by us.
Getting to Devizes
- Airports
- Bristol (BRS), 50 km · Cardiff (CWL), 94 km · London Heathrow (LHR), 107 km
- Bristol → Devizes43 km · quickest by road, 1h 22m · £6–8
- London → Devizes131 km · quickest by road, 3h 7m · £13–18
- Cardiff → Devizes83 km · quickest by road, 2h 22m · £10–14
- Plan a tripFrom anywhereThe planner compares every way there from wherever you are.
Road and air are today’s quick answer; timetabled trains, buses and ferries load on the results page from the operators’ feeds.
No local-transport research exists yet for Devizes
Our researched notes are written from a sourced entry: every shared taxi, boat and village bus with its operator, its rule, its fare and the year we saw it, and what could not be confirmed. Nobody has done that work for Devizes. What is above is what we hold from open sources; nothing here pretends to be more.
- Get inEvery Easter, hundreds of canoeists set off from Devizes Wharf heading for the Thames at Westminster in the annual Devizes to Westminster International Canoe Race.
From Wikivoyage: Devizes, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us; that article was last edited 2026-09.
- 0188 km
- 02187 km
- 03514 km
- 04520 km
- 05550 km
If you know how people move in Devizes – the stand, the rule, the fare – tell us, and the note gets an entry.
Next door to Devizes
Devizes is 43 km from Bristol, the nearest large city, whose note carries the wider picture.
- Bromhamvillage and civil parish in Wiltshire, United Kingdom5.5 km
- Rowdevillage and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, UK2.5 km
- Urchfontvillage in Wiltshire, England, UK5.8 km
- Potternevillage in Wiltshire, UK2.7 km
- Seendvillage in Wiltshire, England, UK5.9 km
- Poulshotvillage and civil parish in Wiltshire, England3.7 km