Malmesbury is a town and also civil parish in Wiltshire, England. As a market community it came to be noticeable in the Middle Ages as a centre for discovering concentrated on and also around Malmesbury Abbey, the mass of which forms a rare survival of the dissolution of the abbeys. As soon as the site of an Iron Age fort, in the Anglo-Saxon period it became the site of a monastery well known for its learning and also one of Alfred the Great's fortified burhs for support against the Vikings. Æthelstan, the very first king of England, was buried in Malmesbury Abbey when he passed away in 939. In 2011 the population got to 5,380 living in 2,280 homes. The extra figures are offered for The Abbey, the additional ecclesiastical church added to that of St Paul when this existed. Figures from 1911 are for municipal district and after 1961 for ward. For 1901 the area was divided into 3 particular parishes, St Paul Within, St Paul Without and also Abbey.